Longtime aides to former President Biden told The Post on Monday they were alarmed that his stage 4 prostate cancer wasn’t detected before it spread to his bones—and they worry that concerns over public reaction may have delayed its diagnosis.
“I do believe that they felt like something was going on, and were worried about it and kind of hedged around it for a little bit,” one White House staffer who worked closely with Biden, 82, told the New York Post.
Unlike what appears to have been a deliberate effort to hide his declining mental fitness, former aides told The Post they believe there was a willful disregard of his physical condition, driven by fears that a cancer diagnosis might have derailed last year’s election, when Biden refused to step aside and open the field to other Democratic contenders.
The former president’s office revealed on Sunday that he only received a diagnosis two days earlier after reporting “increasing urinary symptoms.”
“I just don’t know how they just, kind of find this out on a Friday, and it’s this far advanced and serious,” the Biden White House aide said. “[If it’s] in the bones, there’s gotta be a discomfort … I think they just didn’t test.”
Another longtime Biden aide questioned why his presidential physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, did not conduct a Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test—one of the most widely used methods for detecting prostate cancer.
The February 2024 physical report, Biden’s final medical examination while in office, made no mention of the test, The Post noted.
“I think the likely scenario, knowing Kevin O’Connor pretty well, is that they had a discussion on what a PSA test is, and they decided not to do one because it would likely be elevated and cause a story, since a lot of older men have high PSAs that are false positives,” that source told the outlet.
“A blood test has a paper trail. They probably just didn’t do the test. I think it would leak if he had a PSA test they tried to bury,” the source added.
“What’s ironic is that if they didn’t give the president a PSA test because of the potential for optics of a possible false positive, that decision is ultimately going to lead to his death because they could have caught it earlier,” the person noted further.
On Monday, a number of medical experts said Biden likely had prostate cancer for years before it metastasized to his bones.
“He did not develop it in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president,” oncologist Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an appointee to Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. I don’t think there’s any disagreement on that,” he added.
While in office, Biden faced growing concerns about his mental sharpness and visible signs of physical decline. He ultimately ended his re-election campaign on July 21, following a wave of defections from Democratic allies after a widely criticized debate performance against then-GOP frontrunner Donald Trump on June 27.
Biden had argued he was the party’s best hope to defeat Trump, but critics contend that his insistence on staying in the race ultimately helped clear the path for Trump’s return to power.
The announcement of Biden’s cancer diagnosis came just two days ahead of the release of “Original Sin,” a highly anticipated book alleging that his team actively concealed his physical and cognitive deterioration. The book was co-written by CNN host Jake Tapper, who chastised Lara Trump in 2020 when she tried to point out Biden’s mental decline months before he won the election.
One former White House aide expressed skepticism about the timing of the announcement, suggesting it was intended to preempt a potentially narrative-defining account of Biden’s decline, said The Post.
Biden did say in July 2022 he had cancer — in the present tense — but the White House press office rushed to say he was referring to historical skin cancer.