Why Joe Biden's Cancer Fuels Trump's Theory That the Democrat Was Hiding Something
The debate over Joe Biden's gradual decline during his term was brought back into the spotlight Saturday with the release of a 2023 audiotape in which the then-president loses track of key dates in his life. An investigative book to be released Tuesday also recounts how the White House hid from the world the growing weaknesses of a president who long clung to his reelection bid. Joe Biden, who was the oldest US president in history when he left office in January, has recently denied any cognitive decline. He withdrew from reelection last summer and ceded his seat to Kamala Harris in the presidential race after a disastrous debate against Donald Trump, who was sworn in in January at age 78. Joe Biden's team, and particularly his wife Jill Biden, has always denied hiding anything about his health.
JD Vance expressed his doubts about this on Sunday, after a meeting in Rome with the new Pope Leo XIV, believing it possible to "recognize - whether it was the doctors or the former president's staff - I don't think he was able to do a good job for the American people." "In some ways, I blame him less than the people around him," added the 40-year-old US vice president.
Suspicions and questionsDonald Trump Jr., for his part, questioned whether Joe Biden's cancer could have been detected earlier, implying that the former president had known about the diagnosis for a long time. "What I would like to know is how Dr. Jill Biden missed stage five metastatic cancer, or is this another cover-up??" he asked on his father's platform, Truth Social, referring to the former first lady. Jill Biden has a doctorate in education science, and there are only four stages of cancer severity. Donald Trump Jr. then posted a video of Joe Biden, whose eldest son Beau Biden died in 2015 from brain cancer, in which the former president is seen saying, in an apparent 2022 gaffe: "I, and so many other people I grew up with, have cancer."
Experts have suggested that Joe Biden's cancer may well have gone undetected earlier, noting that the PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test isn't routinely done beyond age 70. "It could be that they decided to stop checking PSA annually and then he had urinary symptoms," suggests Russell Pachynski, an oncologist at Washington University in Missouri.
