WASHINGTON − Vice President JD Vance questioned whether Joe Biden had been fit for duty in the White House following news the former president has an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force Two after meeting Pope Leo XIV in Rome, Vance said he wishes the best for Biden, adding that "hopefully he makes the right recovery." Vance then reflected on Biden's four years in the White House.
"Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or at some point in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job," Vance said. "You can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with the recognition that whether it was doctors or whether there were staffers around the former president ‒ I don't think he was able to do a good job for the American people."
"That's not politics. That's not because I disagreed with him on policy," Vance said. "That's because I don't think that he was in good enough health."
Biden, 82, was diagnosed on May 16 with prostate cancer that had spread to the bone after a nodule was discovered on his prostate following urinary symptoms, a spokesperson said. Biden has a Gleason score of 9 and a grade group 5, which is on the higher end of the scale, meaning the cancer is more likely to grow and spread quickly.
Biden's most recent annual physical as president took place in February 2024. The president's physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, did not identify any signs of cancer, describing Biden as a "healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency." The report cited Biden's sleep apnea treatment and stiffened gait from arthritis.
"I blame him less than I blame the people around him," Vance said of Biden. "Why didn't the American people have a better sense of his health picture? Why didn't the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with?"
In February 2023, a skin lesion was removed from Biden’s chest, but his doctor said no additional treatment was needed for what is known as basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer.
Biden, the oldest person ever elected as U.S. president, dropped out of the 2024 presidential election last July after he struggled to piece together coherent thoughts during a disastrous debate with President Donald Trump that exposed an aging president.
Multiple books published in the months after Biden's presidency have detailed efforts by the White House to conceal Biden's decline, forcing Democrats to answer whether they believe the octogenarian president should have passed the torcher earlier.
"This is serious stuff. This is a guy who carries around the nuclear football for the world's largest nuclear arsenal," Vance said. "This is not child's play, and we can pray for good health, but also recognize that if you're not in good enough health to do the job, you shouldn't be doing the job."
Trump, in a May 18 statement, said he and first lady Melania Trump were saddened to hear about Biden's cancer and extended their "warmest and best wishes" to the Biden family.
The next day, Trump questioned why the "public wasn't notified a long time ago" about Biden's cancer, appearing to put his weight behind an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that the Biden White House knew about the former president's cancer but withheld it from the public.
"I think it's very sad, actually," Trump told reporters when asked about Biden's 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 misstated Biden's diagnosis. Stage 9 cancer does not exist. Biden's cancer is considered stage 4, the most severe level, which is defined by the cancer spreading to other parts of the body.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on May 19 said Trump still has faith in the quality of health care being provided to him in the wake of his predecessor's cancer diagnosis. "He trusts his physicians," Leavitt said.
This story has been updated to include new information.
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
