Considering in advance? After a life in the public service, the former president is faced with a diagnosis of perilous cancer and difficult questions.
Joe Biden diagnosed “aggressive” prostate cancer
Former President Joe Biden received a “aggressive” form of prostate cancer.
Joe BidenThe release of American policy was never going to be easy.
After a life in the public service which ended with an unprecedented turnaround on the opportunity to seek a second mandate, the former president saw his mental acuity increasingly examined and his inheritance of the White House systematically steam By his successor – all this within four months since he moved to 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.
Now the announcement that Biden, 82, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form prostate cancer, which metastasized in the bone, caused a wave of sympathy and compassion. But he also underlined growing questions and, among some high -level Democrats, the anger of his initial decision to present himself to re -election despite signs of physical fragility and the reality of advanced age.
“So far, so good,” Biden told USA Today in January. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I am 86?”
In the interview with the oval office, he said that he always believed that he could have defeated Donald Trump In 2024, as he had done in 2020, if he had not withdrawn from the competition after wandering, Failing debate performance Last June. His vice-president, Kamala Harris, claimed the Democratic appointment but lost the general elections.
Among many independent political analysts, however, Biden’s defeat seemed almost guaranteed, given the alarm of voters on inflation and immigration as well as concerns about its vigor. Some speculate that an earlier decision not to arise again, and the primary campaign on a large scale that would have followed, would have enabled another Democratic candidate to win in November.
Now there is also this debate: was there a concealment to prevent the American people from understanding the state of the president’s health?
“Is this another concealment ???
Surveillance of the health of presidents has long been a difficult company, returning to disabling stroke that Woodrow Wilson suffered in 1919; His wife has become his porter. When Ronald Reagan announced that he had received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, some observers wondered if he had shown early signs of the disorder before leaving the White House in 1989.
Here is what we now know about the Biden Politics’ final release
President Joe Biden announced that he had prostate cancer. He was already under control for his mental acuity. Here’s what we know now.
Even Trump, 78, was faced with questions about his mental acuity, although he boasted that a cognitive test used to dementia during his medical examination in April.
“Melania and I are saddened to hear about the recent medical diagnosis of Joe Biden,” he said Social Sunday of truth. “We express our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a quick and successful recovery.”
But his son, Donald Trump Jr., who initially republished a message that said: “Apart from politics, we wish him a quick recovery”, followed with A message suggesting a plot And make fun of the former first lady Jill Biden, who has a doctorate in education.
“What I want to know is how Dr. Jill Biden missed the metastatic cancer of stage five or is it another concealment ???” He wrote. He republished a message that said, without providing evidence that it was “very likely” that Biden was diagnosed with cancer while he was president. (There are four stages of cancer.)
The young Trump pinned the message at the top of his flow on the social media site X, which gives him particular importance to his 15 million followers.
The allegations of concealment were fed by an explosive book on May 20 by Jake Tapper from CNN and Alex Thompson d’Axios. Entitled “SIN Original”, he details how the most interior circle of aid in the White House protected Biden – limiting the hours of the day he worked, the duration of the speeches he pronounced, even the access of the members of his cabinet.
The release last week of the audio recording of Biden’s interview in 2023 with special lawyer Robert Hur sparked more controversy. In this document, Biden speaks arrogantly and has trouble remembering the names and dates.
Representative James Comer, R-Kentucky, president of the supervisory and liability committee of the Chamber, said on Friday that the panel would resume an investigation into the allegations of a concealment. “Obviously, this interview, which was several months before the intensive use of the autopen, Joe Biden was not able to make decisions,” said Commer on “Hannity” of Fox News. “He was not consistent.”
Biden’s medical diagnosis cannot dissuade the surveys of the GOP to come.
“Listen, I will say that if the right time to have this conversation is now or in the future, we must really be honest to find out if the former president was able to do the work,” said vice-president JD Vance aboard the Air Force Two.
At one point, Biden expected to write his memoirs and plan his presidential library, he will rather be confronted not only with cancer processing, but also with requests for congress and an avalanche of questions.
A reluctant democratic calculation
Meanwhile, the Democratic leaders of the Congress died discussions on the recognition of a disturbing drop in the acuity of Biden and, in the affirmative, what they did or should have done on this subject.
“We are impatiently waiting for,” said the head of the Senate minority last week, Chuck Schumer, when Kasie Hunt of CNN pressed him on what he observed during private meetings with Biden. When she asked if Biden’s decision had cost Democrats the White House, he would only repeat: “We are impatiently waiting for”.
“Is that it?” She asked. “That’s all,” he said.
But some democrats believe that the party has no choice but to explore Biden’s complicated exit from politics.
“It was a mistake” for Biden to stay in the race as long as him, Senator Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, said on Sunday on “Meet The Press” by NBC. “It was an error for the Democrats not to listen to voters earlier and to set up a process that would have brought us in a position where we could have been more competitive this fall.”
In the presidential competition of 2028, economic and other questions will probably be dominated, but the residue of Biden’s departure could also be a factor.
Its most fervent defenders and members of his administration, such as former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, were able to find themselves forced to address what they knew and what they did.
And those who had a certain distance from the former president – the governor of Illinois JD Pritzker, the governor of Maryland Wes Moore, even the representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio Cortez – could be stimulated as the type of new faces that the party needs.
For the moment, Democrats could use a boost.
According to a Associated survey This month, a precipitated decline of the 31% which considered themselves that about a year ago. (Twenty-five percent are now optimistic about the future of the GOP.) Even among the Democrats, only about a third expressed optimism for their party.
The reconstruction of credibility for the future, according to some, can first require a calculation with the past.