If Jill Biden ever sits down with Melania Trump, she already knows exactly how far she would let the conversation go.
Biden, 75, talked about First Lady Melania Trump, the fairness of U.S. elections and the idea of a third term for President Donald Trump in the final part of a four-part interview with host Jamie Kern Lima. The installment debuted Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026, on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show.” She also weighed in for the first time on the release of audio recordings from former President Joe Biden’s conversations with his biographer.
Mrs. Biden has previously described the atmosphere between them as notably frosty. Asked what she would say if the two of them got together now, she said she “probably wouldn’t get personal.” “I think I would just ask the sorts of things she was working on and what was important to her,” Biden said.
The Tapes She Says Were Private
The recordings of Joe Biden and his biographer, which included discussions of classified material, drew her first public comment on the subject. “They were personal conversations, and I don’t think they should’ve been released,” she said.
Why She Stops at Indifference
Asked how she reacts when she sees the president, Biden reached for a line she repeats often: the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference, and anyone who gets themselves to indifference has won the battle.
She said she has tried very hard to do that. Hate, she said, is negative, time-consuming and toxic — it eats at a person. What gets her through, she said, is telling herself the situation will end, that it is not forever, and that she is not going to let one person ruin the joy in her life. That, she said, is when she feels she has it conquered.
She Won’t Even Tell Joe
One thing stays locked up: her ballot. Biden said she never, ever tells anyone who she voted for — not her husband, and not even when he asks. So Joe Biden, she said, has never known whether she voted for him.
On whether U.S. elections are fair, she said she hopes they are, 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 mail them in or go to a polling place. Deciding it is all rigged, she said, is a place you cannot even let your head go.
Then came the qualifier. You see things, Biden said, and you do question. She said she asks herself how it happened, pointing to all the states that had been blue states, and said she has no answers for that.
The possibility of a third Trump term got a shorter response. Biden said no, then asked whether it isn’t in the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment says no person can be elected president more than twice.
Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio got even less. Biden said she has no thoughts on either of them, because she is not going to be voting for them anyway.
Not in Her Lifetime
Should there be an age limit for elected officials? Biden said there probably should be. She said she had never thought about where the cutoff belongs, then guessed it has to land somewhere in the 80s.
The last question was about the first woman to win the White House, and Biden did not leave room for optimism. She is 75, she noted, and said she does not know how it looks across the next 15 or 20 years she hopes to have. “Not in my lifetime,” she told Kern Lima.
