Social media was abuzz after First Lady Jill Biden gave a presentation at the White House in what is likely to be one of President Biden's final Cabinet meetings.
President Biden on Friday convened his Cabinet for the first time since Oct. 2, 2023, this time with the first lady in attendance to talk about the White House's efforts on women's health research.
Regarding Jill Biden's attendance, the president said, “Here and in previous administrations, first ladies have attended these meetings for specific reasons. This is the first time that Jill will be participating, and it shows how important the issues she's going to talk about are.”
He finally handed it to his wife and said, “It's all yours, boy.”
US First Lady Jill Biden attends and speaks at the first Cabinet meeting of her husband, President Joe Biden's administration, at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 20, 2024. First Lady Jill Biden spoke about the progress of the White House Women's Health Research Initiative. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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New York Post Jill Biden, who was sitting at the head of the executive table in the Cabinet Office, “read for four and a half minutes from a binder on maternal and child health initiatives after her husband spoke for just two minutes at the beginning of the meeting,” the report said.
The president traditionally sits at the center of the table, with cabinet members seated in the order of their departments' establishments. Hillary Clinton appears to be the last sitting first lady to attend a meeting of her husband's cabinet.
The amount of influence the first lady has over Joe Biden and his administration has been a frequent topic of debate, with many commentators criticizing her attendance at the meeting on social media.
The New York Post reported that Jill Biden “is considered by insiders to be the most influential first lady since Edith Wilson, who severely limited contact with her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, after he suffered a severe stroke in October 1919.”
Digital strategist Greg Price said of the comparison, “She's literally Edith Wilson, but she's boldly present in the 24/7 news cycle and no one in the media cares.”
“It was amazing. A clearly exhausted Joe Biden called his first full Cabinet meeting in 11 months and then quickly handed the microphone over to his wife, Jill,” said Steve Cortez, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump. Cortez went on to ask, “Who's running the country?”
Political commentator “As Jill Biden begins the first Cabinet meeting the White House has held in nearly a year, we are being asked to act as if this is normal,” Kate Hyde said.
“Jill Biden is the chair of the Cabinet meeting. No one voted for her to be there… This must be part of her deal to get Joe out of the election,” podcaster Tim Young speculated. “There's no reason for her to be there.”
First Lady Jill Biden, third from left, speaks at a Cabinet meeting on Friday. (AP/Manuel Balce Senator)
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Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist newspaper, quipped, “I was unaware that our constitutional political system vests any power whatsoever in the unelected wife of the titular president.”
“It's crazy that the world's number one nuclear superpower has found itself in a power vacuum,” said T. Beckett Adams, a columnist for The Hill. “It's even crazier that that vacuum has been filled by the wife of a former king who has no legal authority to rule.”
“Is this true?” asked Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). “Is this guy running the country?”
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“President Biden has asked the First Lady to join him at the start of the meeting to highlight the groundbreaking research they are leading to fundamentally change how we fund and approach women's health research, before updating his Cabinet and the public on the continuing accomplishments of the most successful administration in modern history,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital.
“If the only response from these critics is conspiracy theories that discount historic advances in women's health research, including on horrific diseases, it's easy to understand why more and more American women feel that the radical anti-abortion right just doesn't care about them,” he added, making a satirical remark about Hawley's escape from the Capitol on January 6.
Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.
