Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, with metastasis to the bone, according to a statement from his personal office Sunday.
Doctors diagnosed Biden last week with a prostate nodule after he experienced increasing urinary symptoms. By Friday, they diagnosed him with cancer.
Biden’s office said the cancer “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
A spokesperson said in a statement that the 82-year-old Biden and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.
The diagnosis’ revelation came as Democrats were publicly grappling with new questions about Biden’s mental acuity throughout the last two years of his presidency, which culminated in a disastrous debate performance and his decision to drop out of the 2024 campaign.
David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic operative and former Barack Obama adviser, said on CNN minutes after the diagnosis was revealed that conversations about Biden’s mental acuity “should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s struggling through this.”
Biden’s aides have been bracing for the Tuesday release of a new book: “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” chronicling what the authors describe as a White House campaign to cover up Biden’s deteriorating condition while in office.
On Friday, audio clips of the former president’s interview with then-Special Counsel Robert Hur — in which Biden occasionally paused for long periods of time and struggled to remember dates — were published by the news site Axios. One of the dates he struggled to recall was that of his son Beau Biden’s death. Beau Biden, the former Delaware attorney general, died in 2015 of brain cancer.
TJ Ducklo, a former Biden staffer who has also battled cancer, offered an optimistic message of support on Sunday.
“No one in America is stronger than Joe Biden,” Ducklo wrote on X. Mine metastasized to the bones too. Cancer has no fucking idea who it’s dealing with. Betting against Biden has never been and still remains a bad f***ing bet.”
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
