Jill Biden, the president’s closest adviser, is facing mounting criticism. She’s not cracking.

ALLENTOWN — Four years ago, Jill Biden straight-armed a protester charging at her husband, making largely positive headlines as a proudly protective wife who told reporters, “I’m a good Philly girl.”

Back then, the Washington Post called her a “hero” for protecting her husband. No longer is that the mood. Last week, when she greeted her husband on stage following a disappointing debate performance and appeared to help him down some steps, the footage was used to illustrate calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

Through the lens of the 2024 election, in which a majority of voters believe that Biden is too old to serve another term, and in the wake of a debate performance that only inflamed those worries, the first lady is facing renewed scrutiny over her role as her husband’s chief defender.

Biden is her husband’s closest adviser, one of his most active surrogates, and a supportive force behind his reelection run, even after the tough debate performance.

She’s drawn fire from Democrats and pundits this week, skeptical of Biden’s abilities, who think she should convince him to decline the nomination. Conservative media have long tried to portray her as an opportunist eager to remain in political power.

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As she became a flashpoint in the conversation surrounding Biden’s candidacy, she was featured on the cover of Vogue in an article staunchly defending her husband. The timing of the spread in a fashion magazine drew some criticism and only further emphasized her role in the campaign.

The campaign “will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president,” she told Vogue in a statement added to the top of the magazine feature after it was published. “We will continue to fight.” She added that her husband would “always do what’s best for the country.”

The magazine spread had been in the works for months and Elizabeth Alexander, the first lady’s communications director, described the backlash to her appearance in the glossy as symptomatic of the double standard applied to powerful women.

“Society has put all first ladies, including Dr. Biden, in an impossible situation — with Twitter/X magnifying this on steroids in today’s world,” Alexander said.

In the midst of one of the most challenging moments of her husband’s reelection campaign, Biden visited the Allentown campus building of Lehigh Carbon Community College on Tuesday.

“Are you working during the summer?” Biden asked community college employees gathered for her visit. “I’m working, too, in a different sense.”

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At the event, scheduled well before last week’s debate to discuss Latino educational and career advancement opportunities with U.S. Rep. Susan Wild (D., Pa), Biden made no mention of the debate, which has sent the campaign into damage control.

Like many White House and campaign events, the visit to Allentown was largely scripted. Biden read off a teleprompter, listing some of her husband’s accomplishments that have benefited Latinos. She listened to a roundtable conversation about the benefits of programming in the region, some of which was funded by her husband’s signature American Rescue Plan. She did not take any questions from reporters.

Among Biden’s reelection challenges is waning support among Latino voters whom he won overwhelmingly in 2020 but who, polls show, are abandoning the president.

While Biden is no stranger to campaigns — she’s been with her husband for 15 of them — she has repeatedly said over the years that she doesn’t like politics, which never came naturally to her.

“The president has plenty of political and policy advisers — that’s never been her role,” Alexander said. “... She supports his career and he supports hers.”

A career teacher for more than 30 years, Biden has taken just three school years off from teaching and is the only first lady to hold a full-time job while her husband is in office. She has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College since 2009 — a relatable working-woman identity that the campaign has leveraged along with her middle-class Philadelphia upbringing.

“Teaching isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am,” she said Tuesday in Allentown. “And Joe understands this, and he knows that the key to our tomorrows is in our classrooms.”

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As the closest person to the president, Jill Biden has been the one the campaign sees as best equipped to respond to concerns about Biden’s age and health.

In the aftermath of the debate, she has not spoken about his health explicitly, but for years she has said he is capable of serving another term.

She’s also described herself as fiercely protective of her family. In her 2019 memoir, she acknowledges she’s the grudge-holder in the family.

“Joe will be friendly and make conversation with anyone, even if it’s a colleague who previously bad-mouthed him,” she writes. “But that means I end up being the holder of the grudges. I’m the one who wants to stomp up the hill to confront the mean kid. I remember every slight committed against the people I love.”

She often recounts the tragedies and triumphs that have defined the couple’s nearly 50 years of marriage. She’s been with Biden through three presidential campaigns, six Senate campaigns, the loss of their son, Hunter Biden’s struggles with addiction, and the brutal 2020 campaign against then-President Donald Trump. “To say they’ve been in foxholes together doesn’t even begin to explain their bond,” Alexander said.

The two went on their first date in Philadelphia in 1975, when she was a 24-year-old senior in college. Biden was a freshman senator, whose wife and daughter had been killed in a car accident two years earlier.

At a fundraising event in Chestnut Hill last month, Jill Biden retold their courtship story and described her husband as “the strong, steady one.” “Always unflappable,” she said. “Always unflinching.”