Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created the comic strip “Dilbert,” said on his podcast on Monday that he had the same kind of aggressive prostate cancer as former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and that it had spread to his bones. He said he had only months to live.
“My life expectancy is maybe this summer,” he said.
Mr. Adams, 67, is a supporter of President Trump and has been critical of Mr. Biden, but on Monday he expressed his sympathy for the former president.
“I’d like to extend my respect and compassion and sympathy for the ex-president and his family because they’re going to be going through an especially tough time,” Mr. Adams said. “It’s a terrible disease — it’s going to get very painful for the president.”
It was not clear when Mr. Adams was diagnosed, but he said that he decided to share the news after learning that Mr. Biden had the same disease, in part because he hoped that Mr. Biden’s announcement would draw attention away from his own. He had kept quiet about it to prolong a sense of normalcy, he said: “Once you go public, you’re just the dying cancer guy.”
Mr. Adams said he was also wary of sharing his diagnosis because he wanted to avoid the kind of negative online attention that Mr. Biden has received since his office announced the news on Sunday.
“One of the things I’ve been watching is how terrible the public is,” he said, adding that people had been “cruel.”
“There’s no sympathy for Joe Biden for a lot of people,” Mr. Adams said. “It’s hard to watch.”
Mr. Adams created “Dilbert,” which mocks office culture, in 1989, and it was syndicated around the world. In 2023, hundreds of newspapers dropped the cartoon after Mr. Adams said on his podcast that Black people were “a hate group” and that white people should “just get the hell away” from them.
On his podcast at the time, he defended his remarks, saying that “you should absolutely be racist whenever it’s to your advantage.” He later said his comments were intended as hyperbole.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said he was surprised that Mr. Biden’s diagnosis wasn’t made public earlier, seeming to suggest without evidence that the former president’s cancer had been covered up. But Mr. Adams said on his podcast that it was possible for Mr. Biden to not have been showing symptoms when he received a clean bill of health from his doctor last year.
Part of Mr. Adams’ sympathy for Mr. Biden seemed to come from his own lived experience with the disease, which he called “intolerable.” Mr. Adams said he had been using a walker for months and was in a constant state of pain. Apart from recording his podcast, he said, he spends most of his days sleeping. As a California resident, he indicated that he would be using aid-in-dying drugs, which are available to the terminally ill in the state.
“I don’t have good days,” he said. “Every day is a nightmare. And evening is even worse.”
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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