The most uncomfortable ride of Jill Biden’s years in the White House featured an unusually tense passenger: Melania Trump.
In her new memoir, A View from the East Wing, the former first lady recalls a frosty motorcade journey from the White House to the U.S. Capitol on Inauguration Day 2025, shortly after welcoming Donald and Melania Trump for the traditional pre-inauguration tea.
According to Biden, the atmosphere between the two first ladies was anything but warm.
As the motorcade made its way toward the Capitol, organizers had included a third passenger in hopes of easing any awkwardness: John Bessler, husband of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.
“I don’t know how long this has been tradition, but it certainly helps with the awkwardness,” Biden wrote, joking that Bessler “must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws.”
Bessler reportedly tried to keep the conversation flowing.
At one point, he asked Melania about her son Barron Trump’s studies at New York University.
The response was brief.
“‘NYU,'” Biden recalled Melania replying before looking back out the window.
According to Biden, most attempts at conversation eventually shifted to discussions about the weather.
In the memoir, Biden suggests lingering resentment may have contributed to the chilly exchange.
She writes that Melania blamed President Joe Biden for the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago during the classified documents investigation.
“Melania blamed Joe personally for the FBI searching through her private spaces at Mar-a-Lago,” Biden wrote.
Despite that, Biden says she understood why the experience would have been upsetting.
“I have compassion for her,” she wrote. “I knew how distressing it was to have agents rummage through your underwear drawer.”
The motorcade story is one of several behind-the-scenes moments Biden shares while reflecting on the final months of her husband’s presidency and the transition back to Donald Trump.
She writes that one of her few other interactions with Melania came after the assassination attempt against Trump during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.
Biden said she called to check on both Melania and Barron.
According to her account, Melania was “polite and controlled as ever.”
Biden also notes that Melania declined her invitation to the traditional inauguration tea in 2021 and did not extend the same courtesy when the Trumps returned to the White House in 2025.
Elsewhere in the memoir, Biden describes her reaction to seeing major renovations underway at the White House after Trump’s return.
She writes that parts of the East Wing had been demolished to make room for a new ballroom project.
“The social offices, gutted. The military office, flattened. What had been my office, gone,” she wrote.
“The innards of the East Wing were spread out for everyone to see, like a rare and precious animal that had been hunted down and killed.”
The memoir has also generated headlines because of Biden’s comments about her husband’s widely scrutinized 2024 debate performance against Donald Trump.
In the book and during a recent appearance on The View, Biden revealed that she feared Joe Biden was experiencing a serious medical emergency while on stage.
“When all Americans saw that moment on TV at the debate, I was frightened out of my mind,” she said.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.'”
Biden said doctors later assured her that her husband was fine, but acknowledged she still cannot fully explain what happened.
“To this day, I still cannot say what happened in that moment,” she said. “What happened? I don’t know.”
Trump quickly seized on those remarks, mocking the former first lady on Truth Social.
He criticized Biden for not intervening during the debate if she truly believed her husband was suffering a stroke.
“She thought he was having a ‘stroke,’ and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do,” Trump wrote.
The president’s response added another layer of controversy to a memoir already filled with personal reflections on the end of the Biden administration and the return of the Trumps to Washington.
But among all the political revelations in the book, it may be that awkward ride with Melania Trump—marked by short answers, long silences, and failed attempts at small talk—that has drawn some of the most attention.
