A one-time Democratic rival to Joe Biden has weighed in on the suggestion that there was an ulterior motive behind the former president’s disclosure of his advanced cancer diagnosis.
Dean Phillips, a former Minnesota congressman who launched a long-shot bid challenging Biden in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary, told The New York Times it cannot be “coincidental” that Biden revealed he has cancer amid renewed scrutiny over his fitness for office.
Biden’s office said Sunday that the 82-year-old has an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. The diagnosis was revealed after days of debate over whether Biden was mentally and physically fit to serve another four years in office, a question that already dogged his 2024 reelection campaign.
The conversation was reignited by a series of damning allegations in Original Sin, a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson. The book includes claims that Biden’s aides feared he would need a wheelchair upon returning to the White House.
Additionally, Axios released audio from Biden’s 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his handling of classified materials, which highlighted the extent of the former president’s memory issues and difficulty articulating key points.
“I don’t think it’s coincidental that this was announced this week,” Phillips told The Times. “It’s hard to interpret it any other way.”
Like several key MAGA figures, Phillips also criticized people close to Biden for what he describes as an effort to keep the extent of the 82-year-old’s declining health from the public during his reelection campaign.
“Donald Trump isn’t shy about his corruption,” Phillips said. “What’s so troubling is that what the people around Joe Biden clearly were doing was in some ways more egregious.”
Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Trump, who did not face the same level of scrutiny over his age and health during the last election, despite being just three years younger than Biden, hinted that the Democrat may have concealed his diagnosis.
“I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago, because to get to Stage 9, that’s a long time,” Trump told reporters Monday. There is no stage 9. Stage 4 is commonly used as the most severe cancer marker, indicating that a cancer has spread elsewhere in the body.
Biden’s office said the former president’s cancer was “characterized” by a score of 9, Grade Group 5, on the Gleason Scale—a method used exclusively to assess the severity of prostate cancer. Biden’s score indicates his cancer is very aggressive, with cells likely to grow and spread quickly.
Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer among men and can often be diagnosed earlier than other forms.
Several MAGA figures have questioned how an elderly former president with access to top-tier health care could have remained unaware of his cancer until the later stages.
“What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer—or is this yet another cover-up???” Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of Donald Trump, wrote on X.
However, medical experts have said it is entirely possible Biden only became aware of his cancer once it was already advanced.
“We can’t rule out the possibility that it was an aggressive form that developed quickly,” Natacha Naoun, an oncologist with France’s Gustave-Roussy Institute, told AFP.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also does not recommend that men aged 70 and over undergo regular prostate cancer screenings, known as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests.
Russell Pachynski, an oncologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, told AFP: “It could be they decided to stop checking PSA annually, and then he had urinary symptoms.”
On Monday, Biden thanked those who offered their “love and support” following his cancer announcement.
“Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” Biden wrote on social media, sharing a photo of himself with former First Lady Jill Biden.
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