“I guarantee you,” Joe Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper two months before winning the 2020 US presidential election, “I will be totally transparent in terms of my health and all aspects of my health.”
Even as we’ve continued to learn more about the Biden administration’s desperate attempts to hide his severe cognitive decline over the last couple of years of his administration, his personal post-presidency office issued a statement on May 18 announcing that the 82-year-old was diagnosed, on May 16, with stage 5 prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones. Thoughts, prayers, etc.
Various medical experts seem inclined to argue the matter, but I’m just not buying the “just now diagnosed” story.
Joe Biden, like other presidents, belongs to a special class of people, also including e.g. “super-athletes,” whose health and physical conditions are subject to near-constant monitoring and analysis by medical professionals.
The public, naturally, wants to know everything about a president’s health. So does that president and his inner circle. But that doesn’t mean the latter group wants or intends to disclose bad news to the former group.
The president’s perceived health affects everything from markets to foreign relations to, yes, voting inclinations. Therefore, the line from the White House — not just Biden’s White House, any White House — will always be that the president is in excellent health. He’s vigorous! He’s in great shape! No worries!
The claim that Joe Biden’s “aggressive” prostate cancer went from “undetected” to “stage 5 metastatic” in the four months since he left office is risible.
He and his doctors almost certainly knew about the cancer while he was still president.
They probably knew about it before he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race last July.
They just didn’t want YOU to know about it until he was well out of office and merely a sympathetic old man whose health situation affected only himself and his loved ones, rather than the so-called “leader of the free world” whose admission of a serious health problem might cost him, or his party, votes in an upcoming election.
“Totally transparent,” in Bidenese, means “people look right through me and seeing nothing I don’t want them to see.”
It’s not just Biden. It’s not just serious medical conditions. It’s government, and the political class, from top to bottom.
Politicians love to squawk about “transparency,” but in reality they spend much of their time hiding anything they don’t want known and punishing anyone who dares reveal it. If you don’t believe me, ask Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, or any of the other whistleblowers prosecuted for telling the public the truth.
The secrecy cancer inherent in politics is much more aggressive and deadly than one man’s medical diagnosis.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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