Former President Joe Biden has a well-founded history of gaffes, misstatements, or other verbal stumbles, but even by his exceptional standards, a years-old accidental admission about his cancer diagnosis is a doozy.
As questions swirl about when Biden first knew he was fighting prostate cancer, online sleuths resurfaced a clip of Biden in 2022 where he appeared to disclose that he is battling cancer. The offhand remark came as he visited Brayton Point in Somerset, Massachusetts to mark the closure of a coal-fired power plant and laud federal investments in clean energy.
“That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up (with) have cancer,” Biden said at the podium during his July 20, 2022 visit.
The White House immediately spun the statement as referencing Biden’s previous bout of skin cancer, for which he received treatment before his presidency. His comment came in the context of talking about oil pollution experienced in his home state of Delaware.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump, Jr. led a parade of online critics who speculated whether Biden slipped up and was a little too truthful that day.
“Joe says he had cancer 2 years ago & everyone said it’s a gaffe,” Trump Jr. wrote in a social media post on Monday. “Now that he’s no longer useful they’re all shocked that they missed it. Everyone was in on the cover-up! Who was running the country? We need accountability!”
A 2021 memo by Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the president’s embattled physician and friend, states that the Democrat had “several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency.”
“These lesions were completely excised, with clear margins,” the report continued, according to the Boston Herald.
O’Connor linked the skin cancer to sun exposure, though Biden maintained that his past proximity to Delaware’s oil refineries was the cause.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former member of Biden’s transition team, said on MSNBC after the news of his cancer broke that the president had it for “maybe even a decade.” He called it “surprising” that Biden’s cancer could progress unnoticed to the point that it is “in the bone.”
“He had it while he was president. He likely had it at the start of his presidency in 2021,” Emanuel said. “Most White House doctors would recommend getting the test.”
The diagnosis was conveniently announced amidst a book tour by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson alleging that aides hid Biden’s mental and physical decline from the public for years, even as it became painfully obvious how diminished he had become.
O’Connor, Biden’s doctor, is also facing fresh scrutiny from Republicans, including Trump, who question how he was able to declare Biden “fit for duty” in February 2024, just four months before his disastrous debate that ultimately led to his dropping out of the race.
“If it’s the same doctor that said there’s nothing wrong there, and that’s being proven to be a very sad situation,” Trump said Monday. “I think someone is going to have to speak to his doctor.”
“It takes a long time to get to that situation … to get to a stage nine. I think that if you take a look, it’s the same doctor that said that Joe was cognitively fine. There was nothing wrong with him,” he added.
