Biden says he wouldn't have run in 2024 if he knew about his cancer
Former President Joe Biden would not have run for reelection in 2024 if he had known about his cancer, he said in an interview released Wednesday in which he also sought to downplay the historic debate performance that helped end his political career.
Key points
- Biden, then the president, repeatedly lost his train of thought led to widespread Democratic pressure to end his campaign, which Mr.
- His weak showing on the debate stage led to mounting calls within his party for him to withdraw, an effort eventually backed by longtime friends and allies such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
- It triggered an outpouring of public support — but it also raised questions about how doctors failed to catch the cancer earlier and whether it might have contributed to Biden’s apparent decline toward the end of his term.
Biden also downplayed his poor June 2024 debate performance against Trump that contributed to his exit from the Democratic ticket a month later.
Additional details
- I’m surprised that it wasn’t, you know, the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to [a Gleason score of] 9, that’s a long time,” President Donald Trump told reporters shortly after Biden’s announcement.
- "If I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer, I would have not gone forward because I don't think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running," he said in the interview with People magazine, which was conducted last week following Democrats’ big midterm wins and ahead of his upcoming memoir’s release.
- Prior to his diagnosis, Biden hadn’t been screened for prostate cancer since 2014.
- Biden wrote Sunday on X that the cancer meant he “won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped.” But he still feels sharp, he told the magazine.
- The former president announced his diagnosis — Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer — in May 2025, just four months after leaving the White House.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
Advertisement
Every article behind this summary — 2 articles from 2 outlets
Get stories like this in your inbox.
Subscribe — it's freeOne free email at 6am — your topics, deduplicated, five minutes. No account, no paywall.