President Joe Biden, 79, declared he has cancer on July 20 during a speech about global warming. The seemingly nonchalant comment came as the president spoke about the harmful emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Claymont, Del. “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” he said, as seen in the below clip.
BIDEN: “I and so many other people I grew up with, have cancer.”
Did Joe Biden just announce he has cancer? pic.twitter.com/FeZFsbAeMN
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 20, 2022
The comment quickly caused alarm, and Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler immediately cleared the air. “Check out Biden’s medical report. Before he became president, he’d had non-melanoma skin cancers removed,” he tweeted. The White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates confirmed Glenn’s tweet with a tweet of his own.
This is what the President was referring to. https://t.co/8F0NGTei6f
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) July 20, 2022
Joe’s medical report, which was released in Nov. 2021 by his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, addressed Joe’s past skin cancer scare and attributed it to the massive amount of time he spent outdoors as a kid. “It is well-established that President Biden did spend a good deal of time in the sun in his youth,” he wrote. “He has had several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency. These lesions were completely excised, with clear margins.” Dr. O’Connor then confirmed that there “are no areas suspicious for skin cancer” at the time of the report.
The report also revealed the oldest president in American history had a “benign”, slow-growing polyp removed from his colon in Nov. 2021, similar to the polyp that was removed in 2008. The report was positive and noted as “reassuring.”
In February, Joe pledged to “end cancer as we know it” by reinvigorating his Cancer Moonshot program. “Because of recent progress in cancer therapeutics, diagnostics, and patient-driven care, as well as the scientific advances and public health lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s now possible to set ambitious goals: to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years, and improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer— and, by doing this and more, end cancer as we know it today,” a statement on the White House website read.
