What’s Happening With Jill Biden?

When Jill Biden and her staff were planning out her calendar for 2024, it’s easy to imagine them landing on this month as an ideal time for the first lady to promote her new children’s book, Willow the White House Cat, which tells the true-ish story of a gray tabby cat that went from a quiet life on a Pennsylvania farm to having the run of one of the most famous homes in the world. It would be an anodyne, voter-friendly addition to an election season that would surely be heating up by now. Alas, June has turned out unlike how they’d expected, dominated instead by much bleaker circumstances, namely Hunter Biden’s federal trial and subsequent conviction. Some of that could not have been foreseen, but Willow—well, Willow would have been an odd bit of White House ephemera regardless of its publication date, and now is only more so.

As the Washington Post put it this month, Jill Biden has been “an intensely private first lady” who has “exercised near-perfect control over her image during her 3½ years in the White House.” When she appeared at Hunter’s trial this month, she faced exactly the sort of scrutiny and unpredictable headlines she has sought to avoid. Her communications director reacted defensively to questions about this—“she’s his mother; of course she would be there as much as possible to support him,” the spokeswoman said at one point—and it was hard to argue with that, even as ABC News began reporting on the steep cost to taxpayers of her trips to the courthouse. Joe Biden could not, practically or politically, risk going to court, and she did, stoically observing and comforting emotional family there. After Hunter’s conviction, she quickly sought to cast aside the grim spectacle, telling NBC News, “Joe and I both respect the judicial system, and that’s the bottom line.”

Jill was more in her element a few weeks ago, appearing on Good Morning America and The View, ostensibly to promote her book. These were actually campaign appearances, and pretty awkward ones at that, but they were nothing compared to the book itself, which I have not quite been able to shake from my mind since peering through a digital copy this month as admittedly more consequential events played out. The juxtaposition of poor Willow against all else that has happened in June feels like a telling example of the Bidens’ larger comms troubles and tendency to assume that benevolent gaslighting might be a viable solution for dealing with them.

In the time-honored tradition of first and second ladies releasing such books, Willow was supposed to, in addition to raising money for charities that support military dogs and inspiring young readers everywhere (?), give Jill Biden a wholesome, can’t-lose talking point and be a guaranteed public relations boost for the Biden family. It’s worth thinking about that for a moment. For one thing, did anyone know that the Bidens had a cat? Because all you ever hear about are the dogs—specifically how they can’t stop biting people in the White House. Was writing a children’s book to draw attention to a pet with no record of violence part of the PR sleight of hand the Biden campaign had in mind here? Will anyone see a book about a White House pet right now and not think back to the multiple German shepherds that terrorized Biden’s staff?

Unlike her more famous beastly siblings, Willow doesn’t so much as scratch anyone during the book’s 48 pages. The story opens on a farm in Western Pennsylvania, where Jill is supposed to have first laid eyes on Willow while visiting for a speech. The event in question is unsurprisingly but entertainingly depicted as the most diverse gathering to ever take place on a farm in Western Pennsylvania: In the first row, we can see an interracial gay couple with a baby looking on, with a woman in a hijab right behind them. They provide an audience for Jill embracing Willow for the first time, love at first purr. That night, a farmer tells Willow that she “made quite an impression” on the event’s guest of honor, so much so that the guest wants to take her home. Was Willow even up for adoption? After the farmer tells her she’s leaving, Willow doesn’t seem into it at all; she’s cozy and comfortable in her little spot in the barn. No matter. To the White House she goes anyway.

It might be good news for Jill Biden that no one is paying attention to this book. A recent piece in the Cut ranking celebrity children’s books created a rubric for judging such efforts, and one of its criteria is whether the work has a plot. Though “Cat moves from farm and explores exciting new home, the White House” is a pretty thin plot, it’s a plot nonetheless, and it provides a good excuse to fill the book with fun illustrations of a cat sauntering around a famous building. As a thinly veiled pretense to vault Jill Biden into friendly television shows that will reach female voters, the book has done its job, I suppose, but it is still an … interesting contrast for the Bidens in a month that started with Hunter’s gun trial and will end with the first Biden–Trump debate.

The final portion of Willow the White House Cat turns into a celebration of the many people who work in the White House: the carpenter, the executive chef, the executive housekeeper. As Jill Biden writes in an author’s note, “What makes this magnificent house a home are the men and women who work here.” You see, because this house is actually all of ours. I guess one has to accept that a little propaganda is going to be thrown into any book by a first lady, but my goodness. Willow the cat is shown going around bothering the staff all day while they try to get their work done. Haven’t these staffers dealt with more than enough White House pet entitlement already?

Why dwell on this silly book? As Jill Biden has sought to reclaim control in the wake of Hunter’s conviction, she has returned to a role in the campaign that seems more comfortable for her: playing pickleball and bingo with seniors, who may end up being a bright spot for her husband, and giving speeches in favor of reproductive rights, about the safest political message you can deliver to rank-and-file Democrats these days. Ironically, her appearances in court have inspired perhaps the most positive mainstream coverage of her time in the White House, tributes to her selflessness and steadfast demeanor as the most senior member of her family to attend the trial. But none of that was supposed to be the story—this random book about a cat was supposed to be the story, the thing that a bunch of professional political operatives thought was the right move. Not far beneath the surface of everything else that happened this month were vestiges of the “controlled” campaign she’s supposed to be running, and they reveal a Biden political operation with a pretty bizarre idea of a fluffy news story that might counter election-year negativity. I have discovered that the real Willow has 81,000 Instagram followers, but if her minders think she’s the message voters are seeking, she has her work cut out for her.