News that former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer came as a surprise on Sunday, adding fuel to conversation about the state of the former president’s health in the waning months of his presidency. While well wishes, speculation, and clamor for more details abound, some of the MAGA right’s most prominent voices are chomping at the bit to turn Biden’s diagnoses into a political side show.
“What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of President Donald Trump, wrote on X, pinning the post to the top of his account.
Trump Jr. has long mocked the former first lady — who holds a PhD, not a medical degree — for describing herself as a doctor. His post on Sunday was met with a wave of comments explaining to him that Jill Biden is not a medical doctor. Trump Jr. responded on Monday. “I sometimes forget that part of the mental disorder of leftism is an inability to understand sarcasm,” he wrote. “So for the confused libs out there, I’m well aware that Jill Biden is a fake doctor, not a real one.”
MAGA Youtuber Benny Johnson, who boasts millions of followers across his various social media accounts, claimed that the diagnosis was “the Most Dangerous Cover-up in the History of the Presidency.”
Johnson — who is not a doctor — claimed that “advanced prostate cancer takes +10 years to develop to the stage where Biden’s diagnosis is,” and that “simple blood test or prostate exam will give you near 100% accurate results.”
“They knew. They lied. They hid it. For power. People need to be held accountable for this. Evil,” Johnson added.
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire called for an investigation. “We need congress to actually do something finally,” he wrote on X. “Full investigation. Pull every Biden staffer and official into a hearing. Put them under oath. Jill Biden too. His doctors. Everyone. Who was involved in this cover up? How deep did it go? And most importantly: who was actually running the country for the past four years? We must know.”
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End Wokeness, a prominent MAGA X account with 3.6 million followers, joined Trump Jr. in mocking the diagnosis: “‘We just found stage 4 cancer’ is the new ‘he just has a stutter.’”
It wasn’t just MAGA influencers who responded with speculation and conspiracy theory.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said on Monday on Fox Business that he wishes Biden well, but that he doesn’t believe he just found out about the cancer diagnosis last week, and that he suspects Biden and his team covering it up is part of a “scheme.”
Ed Martin, the former interim U.S. attorney for D.C. who Trump recently installed as the Justice Department’s new pardon attorney, wrote on Sunday: “The integrity of the American Pardon system requires that we examine the Biden pardons and who did what. We will get the bottom of it. Count on us.”
Vice President J.D. Vance also pivoted after wishing Biden well: “Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or some time in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” he said on Monday.
“I blame the people around him,” Vance said, wondering: “Why didn’t the American people have a better sense of his health picture?”
The diagnosis comes as Biden’s mental acuity has been under scrutiny ahead of the release of a book examining the former president’s decline and its impact on the 2024 election cycle. The book — Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson — paints a damning picture of Biden’s mental decline and the measures his team took to cover it up.
MAGA commentators are now alleging the cancer diagnosis was also kept under wraps, but even Fox News acknowledged that the sudden detection of late stage and aggressive cancers was common even in patients who had regular screenings. Dr. Nicole Saphier, a contributor at the network, told the hosts of America’s Newsroom that “it is not uncommon” that patients present with metastatic cancer even when we’re screening for that, and that “some prostate cancers aren’t associated with a rise in [Prostate-specific antigen levels] and he “could have had a false negative.”
Still, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist Biden put on his Covid-19 advisory board, told MSNBC that Biden has likely had the cancer “for many years” and that he’s “surprised” it wasn’t diagnosed earlier. He added that though “a lot of people recommend not doing a prostate-specific antigen after 70,” Biden is a public figure and it’s “a little surprising” he didn’t do it. “I looked back at the records and there’s no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released, that he had a prostate specific antigen,” Emanuel said.
The public uncertainty around the diagnosis and its severity haven’t stopped the MAGA right from mocking the former president while clamoring for congressional investigations into the timeline of events and alleging a nefarious cover up. President Donald Trump, at least, was able to restrain himself. “Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
From Rolling Stone US
