Jill Biden’s new memoir has ignited anger among former Biden staffers, who say it dodges responsibility and reopens the wounds of 2024 by blaming everyone but the Bidens.

Jill Biden writing a book is hardly surprising, but the outrage centers on how the story is told. Former aides say the memoir rewrites the narrative, downplays key failures and points fingers at others instead of owning up. That defensive posture is exactly what unsettles a party trying to move past a painful election cycle.

Several ex-staffers privately told colleagues they wish the Bidens had stepped back and let the party heal before resurfacing in print and on stages. The complaint is consistent: the book frames the 2024 loss as everyone’s fault except the Bidens, and that line stings inside Democratic circles. Critics also note the 2024 DNC autopsy failed to mention concerns about Biden’s health and age, a glaring omission that keeps coming up in these conversations.

What’s more, many former aides feel the couple still seems to believe Joe could have won had the party rallied differently — a take they call delusional. That attitude feeds a deeper anger about accountability, because voters saw the unraveling in real time. For staff who lived through the 2024 scramble, the book reads like another attempt to rewrite events rather than confront them honestly.

Most Democratic Party leaders don’t want to talk about Joe Biden’s presidency, but the Bidens are making that difficult. Both are writing books and the former president plans to make campaign stops ahead of the November midterms.

State of play: Jill Biden’s book opens up a wound for many Democrats who believe the Bidens damaged their credibility with voters by insisting Joe Biden was fit enough to run for reelection in 2024 when he wasn’t, and by pushing the party to publicly defend his fitness.

Many Democrats feel the Bidens have yet to explain themselves, and that Jill Biden’s new book is part of a larger pattern of looking for excuses and other people to blame.

What they’re saying: Several Biden aides — including some of the most loyal ones — are fuming about the former first lady’s reemergence.

One former Biden official said: “I just wish they would give some more time and space and let people move on. It all feels so disingenuous.”

Another said: “The throughline between her book and [Kamala] Harris’ is that they blame everyone but themselves for the loss.”

A former senior Biden official added: “President Biden actually has a legacy that is impactful and should be celebrated at some point — getting us through the pandemic and passing life-changing bills. Why does he keep stepping on it himself?”

A former Biden campaign aide said: “It’s just so selfish. The Bidens preached selflessness and service above all — and every decision they’ve made since he decided to run for reelection has been about themselves. It’s also ironic — the only people undermining President Biden’s legacy are the people closest to him.”

Those lines in the quote capture the core frustration: loyalists who once defended the president now feel the family’s public push undermines the policy wins they want remembered. The tension is real — people acknowledge achievements but gripe that the Bidens keep putting those accomplishments at risk with tone-deaf public moves. That mix of pride and irritation is fueling the chatter in Democratic circles right now.

Then there’s the more brutal criticism from former Obama aides and left-leaning commentators who’ve been unusually blunt. They say the Bidens not only mischaracterized events but actively gaslit voters, minimizing obvious problems until the story could no longer be ignored. That charge of gaslighting is corrosive because it attacks credibility, not just strategy.

TOMMY VIETOR, ‘POD SAVE AMERICA’ CO-HOST: Yes, it is profoundly frustrated. I’m also very triggered this morning by another totally different report. I don’t know if you’ve seen the reports about Jill Biden’s book.

JON FAVREAU, ‘POD SAVE AMERICA’ CO-HOST: Yeah, you can bet that I was triggered as well.

VIETOR: Former first lady, for those that don’t know, wrote a book. Apparently, the point of this book is to dispel this idea that she was part of a cover-up of Joe Biden’s broader health problems or cognitive decline. Not sure that’s-

FAVREAU: Yeah, basically what she says is, no, no, no, I was just part of the coverup about the debate performance.

VIETOR: Yeah, so she talks about her candid reactions to the 2024 June Trump-Biden debate. Well, this is from this, I think they gave the exclusive to the Atlantic or the Atlantic got the book. First lady Jill Biden wondered if her husband had unknowingly ingested drugs or was having a medical episode on live television.

Quote, “Is he short-circuiting?” Jill Biden thought. “Is this a stroke?” That’s another quote.

“I felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?”

So despite thinking your husband had a stroke-

FAVREAU: Great job, Joe, you answered all the questions.

VIETOR: They went to a rally, they went to Waffle House. Like you didn’t wanna take him to a doctor if he thought he had a stroke?

FAVREAU: People, I tweeted about this yesterday, we’ve both been mad together about this. And a lot of people are like, let it go, who cares, it’s in the past.

Zaid Jilani actually captured how I feel about this in a tweet. He was like, to me, it’s an underrated factor in how distrusted Democrats are that they systematically lied about Biden’s condition and in some cases still are. I totally agree with this. I totally-

VIETOR: I hear it all the time.

FAVREAU: I totally disagree with people who are like, no one’s gonna care about Biden in 2028. Everyone’s putting into the past most Democratic primary voters like Joe Biden. No, I think most Democratic primary voters think that Joe Biden accomplished some great things as president and appreciate that he beat Donald Trump in 2020.

I don’t think they appreciated being f*cking lied to by Joe Biden, Jill Biden and their entire f*cking campaign who didn’t just lie about the debate performance but gaslighted everyone and told us we were all overreacting, bedwetters, that their polls were fine, that the f*cking debate was fine. And now Joe Biden’s like, oh yeah, we were lying the whole time.

Those exchanges from former aides show the resentment runs deep, and not just among political opponents. When insiders start using language like gaslighting and selfishness, it signals a fracture in how the party wants to be seen. That matters because credibility is a fragile thing, and once voters lose trust it is hard to win it back.

Practical politics aside, this episode is a reminder that memoirs can reopen old fights. For now, expect more heated private conversations on the left as staffers and operatives argue over strategy, legacy and accountability. It might not change the midterm map, but it will keep the drama alive in Democratic circles for a while.