Watching the 2024 debate with Donald Trump that killed Joe Biden‘s re-election hopes, then-First Lady Dr. Jill Biden now admits she thought her husband might actually be dying or in medical danger onstage.

“I don’t know what happened,” Dr. Biden tells CBS News Sunday Morning‘s Rita Braver in a piece set to run this weekend. “I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my god, he’s having a stroke.'”

“And it scared me to death.”

Biden’s memoir, View from the East Wing, is set to be released June 2. It has been disclosed that a significant part of the publication from Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, will dive deep into reflections on her husband decision, after much pressure, to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.

Although she put on a brave and stoic, longtime-political-spouse face in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous June 27, 2024, meet-up between the 45th and 46th POTUS before CNN cameras in Atlanta, Biden now reveals how shaken she was by her husband’s stumbling and rambling performance.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since,” she told Braver in the first part of their sit-down. “Never?” Braver jumped on that last part of Biden’s remark, asking, “or since?” With questions of the now 83-year-old politician’s mental agility still frequent two years after that debate debacle, Biden stressed “Never, no” in reply.

Unlike Biden’s words now two years later, the fallout was shift in reaction to President Biden’s debate appearance against the former Apprentice host and incumbent he beat soundly in 2020. In the hours and days after the debate, calls for the former Obama VP to pull an LBJ and drop out came fast and furious from all quarters, including from big-time Democratic donor and Emmy winner Damon Lindelof in a dam-breaking guest column for Deadline. After trying to stem the tide, Biden faced up to electoral reality and announced on July 21, 2024 he was withdrawing from the race.

Within days, sitting VP Harris took up the Democratic standard from her running mate. However, despite a strong launch, her campaign was unable to gain the upper hand over Trump and his MAGA machine, and the 45th POTUS became the 47th POTUS after a tighter than expected victory in November 2024.

Since taking office, Trump has trashed and attacked Biden relentlessly, both personally and politically. On the other hand, dealing with a cancer scare, Biden has stayed mainly out of the fray. Yet, the ex-POTUS has emerged every now and then to warn of Trump’s cruel and authoritarian ways.

Expect to be at the opening of Barack Obama‘s Presidential Center in Chicago next month and publish his memoirs soon-ish, Biden has emerged of late with endorsements for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterms. Besides offering praise to Stephen Colbert as the late-night host exited his CBS show, Biden also took to social media earlier this week to honor the fallen on Memorial Day.