JD Vance Goes There on Biden’s Cancer, Questions If He Was ‘Capable’ of the Job
Vice President JD Vance on Monday questioned whether former President Joe Biden was ever physically capable of fulfilling his duties in office after Biden announced he had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
Speaking aboard Air Force Two following a visit to the Vatican, Vance was asked by a reporter to comment on the news of Biden’s diagnosis.
Biden, 82, was diagnosed Friday with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his office. The cancer has metastasized to the bone but is considered hormone-sensitive, which doctors say can allow for effective treatment.
While he expressed hope for Biden’s recovery, Vance also said it raised concerns for him about the former president’s health and the transparency about it.
“Look, I mean, first of all, of course, we wish the best for the former president’s health,” Vance said. “But hopefully he makes the right recovery. Look, I will say, 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.”
He continued:
You can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with a 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. And that’s not politics. That’s not because I disagreed with him on policy. That’s because I don’t think that he was in good enough health. In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him.
The vice president concluded, “Why didn’t the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with? This is serious stuff. This is the guy who carries around the nuclear football for the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. 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.”
Biden’s cancer diagnosis was announced just two days before the release of a book about his cognitive health while in office, from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson.
According to the books, which comes out on Tuesday, there was a concerted effort from people close to Biden to hide his declining mental faculties during his term in office.
Watch above via C-SPAN.
