Vice President JD Vance on Monday questioned former President Joe Biden’s past fitness for office following the recent disclosure that Biden has aggressive prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones.
Vance directed his criticism at members of Biden’s inner circle, who have faced allegations of concealing his physical and cognitive decline. He asked why the American public had not been given a “better sense” of the former president’s health status.
“We wish the best for the former president’s health, and it sounds pretty serious, but hopefully he makes the right recovery,” Vance told reporters.
“I will say, whether the right time to have this conversation is now, or at some point in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job.”
The VP suggested that doctors or staff members concealed the truth from the American public.
“You can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with the recognition that whether it was doctors, or whether there were staffers around the former president…I don’t think he was able to do a good job for the American people,” Vance added.
“And that’s not politics, that’s not because I disagreed with him on policy, that’s because I don’t think that he was in good enough health,” he said.
“In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him,” the VP said of Biden.
“Why didn’t the American people have a better sense of his health picture? Why didn’t the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with?” Vance posed.
“This is serious stuff. This is the guy who carries around the nuclear football for the world’s largest nuclear arsenal,” Vance continued.
“This is not child’s play. We can pray for good health, but also recognize that if you’re not in good enough health to do the job, you shouldn’t be doing the job,” he added.
Biden Likely Had Cancer His Entire Presidency: Expert
Dr. David Shusterman, a board-certified urological surgeon and instructor in urology, said during an appearance on NewsNation that former President Joe Biden may have been living with cancer for “five to ten years,” based on the nature of his diagnosis, meaning his administration was likely aware of the issue but didn’t reveal it to the country – the same as hiding his mental decline.
Biden was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, according to a statement released Sunday by his personal office.
The statement describes the cancer as “a more aggressive form of the disease” that has spread to the bone, though it notes that the condition can be effectively managed, but also that the Biden family is “weighing treatment options.”
“I have to say that in my expertise as a urologist, prostate cancer like this doesn’t come on just overnight. This happens over a long period of time. And typically you would see a PSA elevation, you would do a biopsy, and then you would do a treatment for the prostate cancer,” Shusterman told NewsNation.
“Then after the prostate cancer is treated, it can actually get worse and spread to different parts of the body. And so it’s very unlikely that someone could get annual checkups and not notice a PSA elevation over the past,” he added.
Shusterman then recalled his experience working in VA hospitals, stating that Biden’s diagnosis is consistent any patient who “hasn’t had medical attention in 10 years, presents to an emergency room with bone pain, and then they find that it’s metastatic prostate cancer.”
He continued: “But in the modern age of medicine, especially the fact that he was a former president, he had intensive state-of-the-art care where we can see prostate cancer 10 years in the past. So this is, I mean, it’s very unusual to hear that someone has prostate cancer where they’re annually being followed up.”
He was then asked whether he was suggesting that Biden was battling cancer while he was serving in the Oval Office.
“Well, most likely he had prostate cancer for a long time and aggressive prostate cancers such as this at age 80 grows over a long period of time. I mean usually it takes from the first diagnosis of prostate cancer to the to spread would take five to ten years even in the most aggressive form,” he said.
