Joe Biden’s exit from American politics was never going to be easy.
After a lifetime in public office that ended with an unprecedented turnaround on whether to seek a second term, the former president has watched his mental acuity increasingly scrutinized and his White House legacy systematically steamrolled by his successor −all this in the four months since he moved out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Now the announcement that Biden, 82, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, one that has metastasized to the bone, has prompted a surge of sympathy and compassion. But it has also underscored growing questions and, among some top Democrats, anger about his initial decision to run for reelection despite signs of physical frailty and the reality of advanced age.
“So far, so good,” . “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”
In the Oval Office interview, he said he still believed that he could have defeated Donald Trump in 2024, as he had in 2020, if he hadn’t pulled out of the contest after a wandering, faltering debate performance last June. His vice president, Kamala Harris, claimed the Democratic nomination but lost the general election.
Among many independent political analysts, though, Biden’s defeat seemed all but guaranteed, given voters’ alarm about inflation and immigration as well as concern about his vigor. Some speculate that an earlier decision not to run again, and the full-scale primary campaign that would have followed, would have allowed some other Democratic candidate to prevail in November.
Monitoring the health of presidents has long been a difficult enterprise, back to the disabling stroke that Woodrow Wilson suffered in 1919; his wife became his gatekeeper. When Ronald Reagan announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, some observers wondered if he had shown early signs of the disorder before he left the White House in 1989.
Now there’s also this debate: Was there a cover-up to keep the American people from understanding the state of the president’s health?
Even Trump, 78, has faced questions about his mental acuity, though he has bragged about acing a cognitive test used to screen for dementia during his medical checkup in April.
“Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis,” he said on Truth Social Sunday. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
But his son, Donald Trump Jr., who initially reposted a message that said, “Politics aside, we wish him a speedy recovery,” followed up with a message suggesting a conspiracy and mocking former first lady Jill Biden, who has a doctorate in education.
“What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” he wrote. He reposted a message that asserted, without providing evidence, that it was “highly likely” that Biden had been diagnosed with the cancer while he was president. (There are four stages of cancer.)
The younger Trump pinned the message to the top of his feed on the social media site X, giving it special prominence to his 15 million followers.
The release last week of the audio recording of Biden’s interview in 2023 with special counsel Robert Hur has ignited more controversy. In it, Biden speaks haltingly and struggles to remember names and dates.
Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee said Friday that the panel would resume an inquiry into allegations of a cover-up. “Clearly, from that interview, which was many, many months prior to the heavy use of the autopen, Joe Biden wasn’t capable of making decisions,
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