President Trump and his allies are trying to thread the needle as they take digs at former President Biden’s fitness for office in the wake of his prostate cancer diagnosis.
Biden’s diagnosis comes as a forthcoming book, due Tuesday, is shining a spotlight on his health and painting a dim picture of quick aging.
Trump often bashes Biden for having “no idea what the hell he was doing,” but the president was quick to say Sunday that he wished for his predecessor to make “a fast and successful recovery.”
On Monday, Vice President Vance discussed both topics at once, outlining how the team could move forward with the balancing act.
“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,” Vance told reporters.
Biden’s personal office announced Sunday afternoon that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, a diagnosis that came after a regular medical exam found a “small nodule” on his prostate earlier this month. The finding “necessitated further evaluation,” a spokesperson said.
In the first four months of Trump’s second term, the idea that Biden, 82, wasn’t fit for office, let alone to run for reelection, has come up often in the White House.
Trump has blamed his predecessor for issues from the economy to foreign policy, and Saturday called Biden “ hapless and cognitively impaired.”
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently called Biden “mentally incompetent,” adding that trust in mainstream media outlets has taken a major hit partly because of news coverage of Biden’s mental acuity.
On Monday, a reporter asked Leavitt if there is interest in further scrutiny of Biden’s physician Kevin O’Connor, given the revelations of his fitness uncovered in the new book. Leavitt, in response, said Trump extended his wishes to Biden but “as for any further action, I’ll let the president speak on that first.”
The reporting from “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson includes revelations that aides considered the possibility of putting Biden in a wheelchair if he were elected to a second term and that two weeks before Biden’s debate with Trump, he didn’t seem to recognize actor George Clooney at a fundraiser.
And, just before Biden’s cancer diagnosis was announced, Axios obtained audio from his October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur that appeared to show Biden struggling to answer questions. Hur decided to not file charges after classified documents were found in Biden’s private home, writing that a jury would find him “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden has maintained he was up to the Oval Office job, and aides insisted he remained cognitively fit. Biden ultimately chose to drop out of the 2024 race following the disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
Straddling concern and criticism, Vance said Monday there’s a need for a conversation about Biden’s health and whether he would’ve been capable of handling a second term, while also hoping for a recovery.
“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 said.
“In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him,” he added. “Why didn’t the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with? This is serious stuff.”
A former communications aide in the first Trump administration agreed Biden doesn’t have to be the main focus of scrutiny, considering accountability lies with Democratic operatives and the media.
“You can wish someone well, acknowledge the seriousness of a cancer diagnosis and still be honest about the fact that President Biden been capable of doing the job. It doesn’t have to be mean-spirited, it’s just honest. And it reflects what many have seen for a long time,” the former aide said.
Despite the recent revelations, some Republicans are calling on Trump World to back off Biden while he fights cancer.
“I don’t know if it’s just my bias or background but I don’t want to hear anything else about Biden’s health coverup, tell all’s, interviews with staff etc. Let the Biden family be in peace right now. This is all just so sad and imprudent,” Meghan McCain, the daughter of Biden’s longtime friend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who died of cancer in 2018, wrote on social media Sunday evening.
One source close to Trump World said digs at Biden over his aging were getting stale even before the diagnosis.
“By and large, the Biden acuity issue has passed. Even the Hur audio reaffirms what already know. Not much more to gain there,” the source said.
But to be sure, some Republicans haven’t let a cancer diagnosis get in the way of bashing Biden.
“Does anyone believe President Biden knew what he was doing when on Jan. 17 he granted 2,490 commutations, more in a single day than any prior chief executive had granted over their entire presidency,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Monday morning, repeating questions Trump has floated over whether an aide operated an autopen for Biden in the final days before the inauguration.
Also Monday, Donald Trump Jr. in a social media post called for “accountability” and questioned “who was running the country?”
Meanwhile, political strategist David Axelrod, who served as an adviser to former President Obama and was among the Democrats who pushed for Biden to exit the presidential race, said discussions over mental acuity and whether Biden should have bowed out sooner should be “set aside” as he deals with a prostate cancer diagnosis.
“I think those kinds of discussions are going to happen, but they should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s sort of struggling through this,” Axelrod said on CNN.
