CNN political commentator David Axelrod suggested Sunday that discussions about former President Joe Biden’s mental acuity should be muted and set aside in light of his recent cancer diagnosis.
CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield asked Axelrod, “This comes at a time when there is so much continued attention placed on his mental acuity and stability, as well as ahead of this book release, and you mentioned there’s been a lot of discussion about it. His medical condition now — his announced medical condition now — do you believe that silences or delays a lot of conversations about his last year and a half of his presidency, for now?”
“I think those conversations are going to happen, but they should be more muted and set aside for now, as he’s struggling through this,” Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said.
Biden’s office confirmed on Sunday that the former president was diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer.
The news comes amid a reignited discussion about the former president’s decline while in office and his decision to run for re-election in 2024 despite concerns about his age, as another book about the former president and the 2024 campaign by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson is set to be released on Tuesday.
Axelrod said earlier in the discussion that the cancer diagnosis comes at a “stressful time” for Biden.
“As you guys pointed out, Jake and Alex’s book just came out. It’s getting a lot of attention, a lot of reflection on his decision to run again and the rehashing of all of that can’t be pleasant for him. But, this supersedes all of that, obviously,” he said.
CNN’s Brian Stelter said during a discussion on Sunday that the news puts the debate about Biden’s decline “briefly” on pause.
“And so this book comes out in two days. But some of the excerpts have already come out, and it’s reignited this debate in Washington and beyond, within the Democratic Party about Biden, about whether he should have run for re-election at all. So it seems to me, Jessica, this debate doesn’t end at all. But, it is briefly put on pause as a result of today’s news,” Stelter said, referring to Tapper and Thompson’s book.
Stelter said the timing of the diagnosis was “extraordinary,” citing the release of the Biden-Hur audio from February 2024.
“We know from the statement from his personal spokesman that Biden learned of the diagnosis on Friday. Well, what was the biggest Biden story on Friday? It was the release of those audio excerpts from his conversations with Robert Hur back in 2023. This was the audio that Axios obtained, almost certainly from the Trump Administration, showing memory lapses. And you heard a lot of people on Friday talking about that audio being hard to hear, even excruciating, to hear Biden showing his age on those audio tapes that had never been heard by the public until now,” Stelter said.
Biden’s office said in a statement that the former president’s diagnosis could be effectively managed.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement said.
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