If Jill Biden sat down with First Lady Melania Trump again, the former first lady said, she probably wouldn’t get personal.
Jill Biden, 75, wrote in her memoir, “View from the East Wing,” that Melania Trump held her husband responsible for the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago as the two rode together in a limousine to the Capitol on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. “Melania blamed Joe personally for the FBI searching through her private spaces at Mar-a-Lago,” Biden wrote. She added: “I have compassion for her, having been subject to the same kind of search.”
Biden returned to the subject of the current first lady in the final part of a four-part interview with host Jamie Kern Lima, the installment of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” that debuted Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. She also took on the fairness of U.S. elections and the idea of a third term for President Donald Trump.
She also addressed the release of audio recordings of former President Joe Biden’s conversations with his biographer, which included discussions of classified material. “They were personal conversations, and I don’t think they should’ve been released,” she said.
Asked what she would say if the two women got together now, Biden said: “I think I would just ask the sorts of things she was working on and what was important to her.”
The Shortest of All Possible Straws
The inauguration committee assigned John Bessler, the husband of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, to ride with the two first ladies that day. He “must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws,” Biden wrote.
Bessler asked about Barron Trump at New York University, by Biden’s account. Melania Trump answered, “NYU,” while looking out the window. Biden’s memoir described the first lady as distant during the ride, a portrayal of the moment as awkward and strained.
Donald Trump had a message for her after the inauguration, by her recollection: “If Joe ever needs anything, call me!”
Treated Like a Fixer-Upper
The Bidens flew from Joint Base Andrews to Santa Ynez, California, and stayed with friends, according to her memoir. “Those first days of what I began to call the afterlife were difficult,” she wrote.
She also wrote about the demolition of the East Wing: “During the demolition of the East Wing… I received pictures of the destruction step by step from people in D.C.” Separately, she wrote: “A major landmark and historic treasure was being treated like a fixer-upper on HGTV’s Property Brothers.”
The Opposite of Love Isn’t Hate
Kern Lima asked how she reacts when she sees the president, and Biden reached for a line she repeats often: the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, and anyone who reaches indifference has won the battle. She has tried very hard to do that, she said.
Hate is negative, time-consuming and toxic, she said, and it eats at a person. What gets her through is telling herself the situation will end, that it is not forever and that one person is not going to ruin the joy in her life — the point, she said, when she feels she has it conquered.
A Ballot Even Joe Doesn’t Know
Biden never, ever tells anyone who she voted for, she said — not her husband, not even when he asks. Joe Biden has never known whether she voted for him.
She hopes U.S. elections are fair, she said, because she cannot give up on what she believed the country to be. She described herself as a proud American, like most Americans, and said voters have to believe their ballots matter, whether they cast them by mail or at a polling place. Deciding it is all rigged is a place you cannot even let your head go, she said, though she allowed that you see things, and you do question. She asks herself how it happened, pointing to all the states that had been blue states, and has no answers for that.
On a third Trump term, her answer was no, followed by a question of her own about whether that isn’t in the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment bars any person from being elected president more than twice.
She had no thoughts on Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying she is not going to be voting for them anyway. There probably should be an age limit for elected officials, she said, though she has never thought about where it belongs; her guess was somewhere in the 80s.
The last question was about the first woman to win the White House, and her answer left no room for optimism. “Not in my lifetime,” she told Kern Lima, noting that she is 75 and is unsure how it looks across the next 15 or 20 years she hopes to have.