Sympathy abounds for Biden – but so do ‘cover-up’ claims ...Middle East

WASHINGTON DC – Sympathy abounds across the political firmament in the United States for former President Joe Biden, after Sunday’s disclosure that he has been diagnosed with advanced and aggressive prostate cancer that has already metastasised to his bones.  

Despite their personal animus, President Donald Trump sent an immediate message of support to his predecessor, saying that along with First Lady Melania Trump he was “saddened” by the news. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery”, Trump wrote on his social media platform.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris called Biden “a fighter”, predicting that her former boss would “face this challenge with the same strength, resilience and optimism that have always defined his life”. In a similar message, former President Barack Obama expressed his hope for a “fast and full recovery”.

But questions also abound about the nature of the former President’s diagnosis, and why his cancer appears to have been identified relatively late in terms of the disease’s progress.

Biden, after all, underwent annual physical examinations throughout his presidency, and was – as recently as February 2024, pronounced “fit for duty” by his White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor. The President, wrote Dr. O’Connor, was “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency”. 

Time-and-again, White House officials and leading Democrats cited that assessment as proof that a growing Republican whispering campaign about Biden’s physical decline was politically motivated. They waved away any suggestion that the President should be rethinking his determination to seek four more years in the Oval Office, and govern the country until after his 86th birthday. 

Medical experts say it is possible, though rare, for some prostate cancers to evade detection via routine yearly blood tests. The National Institutes of Health deems that outcome an “uncommon clinical scenario” and state that elevated Prostate-Specific Antigen levels remain the most useful early indicator of the disease. 

Biden’s diagnosis comes at a moment when numerous best-sellers are being published claiming that the White House engaged in a cover-up of his physical decline. Most prominent among them is Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, co-authored by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson.

They argue “self-delusion, self-righteousness and concealment…took hold” in Biden’s inner circle, and claim that insiders were frightened to speak out in an effort to protect the President’s re-election chances. 

square ALISON PHILLIPS

American democracy may not recover from the Joe Biden cover-up

The prostate cancer diagnosis has put Democrats under fresh pressure to explain whether they were sufficiently probing of Biden’s demonstrable decline. Only on Sunday, Congressman Ro Khanna, a prominent Democrat from California, finally admitted that he had been wrong when he publicly backed Biden’s re-election bid and served as a surrogate for the President on the campaign trail.

“People want honesty”, he told ABC News, adding that “in light of what has come out, it is painfully obvious President Biden should not have run”. Khanna suggested lessons were being learned, and that he and his colleagues had shown “too much deference to party leaders, to the old guard, to the advisers…they were telling all of us that he is capable, that he is going to be able to make the race, and obviously that turned out not to be correct”.

Obama, in his message of sympathy, noted “nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe”. That’s a reference to “The Cancer Moonshot”, an effort Biden was leading “to mobilise a national effort to end cancer as we know it”. The idea was first green-lit during Obama’s presidency in 2016, following the death of Biden’s son Beau, the former Attorney General of Delaware who died of brain cancer the previous year.

During his own Presidency, Biden re-ignited the “Moonshot” mission, vowing to build a world where “we watch cancer early so people live longer and healthier lives”. His own personal cancer literacy, forged in the emotional cauldron of his son’s death, is also raising questions about whether his personal diagnosis could have come earlier, influencing him to get out of the Presidential race long before the disastrous June 2024 TV debate with Trump that lead to the unraveling of his campaign.

In his most recent interviews, Biden has again pushed back against criticism about his flawed determination to seek four more years in the Oval Office. Earlier this month, in an appearance on ABC’s The View (America’s equivalent of Loose Women), the former President argued afresh that he would have beaten Trump if he had stayed in the race. He insisted that books revealing the extent of his cognitive decline were “wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that”, he insisted. 

Ten days on from that interview, the country has learned of the aggressive cancer that Biden must now battle. Millions of Democrats are left wondering whether the White House cover-up of his decline runs even deeper than they suspected.

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