CNN host and media pundit Brian Stelter has questioned the timing of former President Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, calling it “extraordinary” as the news coincides with a series of negative stories about the Democrat’s final years in the White House.
Biden, 82, received the diagnosis on Friday, according to a spokesperson, after doctors discovered a “small nodule” on his prostate that required additional evaluation and subsequently determined that the cancer is “high grade” and has spread to the bone.
His representative said the former president and his family are currently “reviewing treatment options” with physicians.
“The timing is just extraordinary,” Stelter told his network colleague Jessica Dean in response to the development.
“Biden learned of the diagnosis Friday. Well, what was the biggest Biden story on Friday? It was the release of those excruciating audio excerpts from his conversations with Robert Hur back in 2023.”
“You have that as one element of the timing here,” Stelter continued. “And then you have this book coming out… one of the biggest political books in several years.”
He was referring to the leaking of audio on Friday from Biden’s 2023 interview with Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur about allegations that he improperly stored classified documents at his Delaware home, which revealed the president struggling to remember key dates and details, having to be prompted by his lawyers and speaking in a hoarse, whispering voice.
The release of Hur’s report on the interview in February 2024, in which he described Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” caused uproar among liberals at the time, who saw it as a calculated attack on the president and an attempt to encourage the perception that he was in a state of cognitive decline in order to boost Donald Trump’s rival presidential campaign.
The book in question is the forthcoming Original Sin by Dean’s fellow network anchor, Jake Tapper, and Axios reporter Alex Thompson. It aims to illuminate the conversations behind the scenes that led to the president’s historic decision last July to drop out of the 2024 race. This decision paved the way for his Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead and, ultimately, lose to Trump in November.
Prior to the book’s publication, Biden appeared to be attempting to reassert control over the narrative surrounding his legacy. He gave a major interview to the BBC earlier this month and appeared on ABC’s The View alongside his wife, former first lady Dr. Jill Biden, much to the annoyance of Democratic strategists keen to move on from their party’s humbling election loss.
Stelter was not the only pundit to note the timing of the announcement: MAGA activist Laura Loomer wrote on X that she believed it was a “PR strategy” to shield Biden from criticism arising from Tapper and Thompson’s book.
Others have reacted more sympathetically to the news, however.
President Trump said he was “saddened” and that he and his wife Melania Trump “extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
Former president Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice president for two terms between 2009 and 2017, paid tribute to his friend’s own track record of supporting cancer research since his son Beau Biden died in 2015, while Harris praised him as a “fighter.”
