What good is someone else’s cancer diagnosis if you can’t spin it into a self-serving conspiratorial yarn?
After former President Joe Biden disclosed Sunday he’s been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) decided to accuse the Biden administration of a “political cover up.”
“Care at the White House should be second to none,” Jackson wrote on social media. “Unbelievable this was missed, but the truth is, his physician was more concerned about assisting with the political cover up than providing world class medical care.”
The accusation echoes similar refrains from other Republicans, who are eager to distract from President Donald Trump’s countless recent missteps, like accepting a $400 million “gift” from Qatar, trying to strong-arm Walmart into price controls because of his tariffs, obsessing over Bruce Springsteen’s skin, and publishing deeply insecure missives about Taylor Swift.
Biden, 82, was reportedly diagnosed on Friday, but to hear some Republicans talk about it, you’d think he’d been keeping his cancer quiet for years.
“What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X, taking a swipe at the former first lady’s doctoral degree in education. (There is also no such thing as “stage five” cancer.)
Trump Jr. doubled down in a separate post. “Everyone was in on the cover-up!” he wrote. “Who was running the country? We need accountability!”
Vice President JD Vance also did his part to help puff up the scandal, responding to a question about Biden’s diagnosis with a series of his own rhetorical questions:
“In some ways, I blame [Biden] less than I blame the people around him,” Vance said with a nod to the conspiracy theory that Biden’s ill health was covered up throughout his presidency.
“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? This is serious stuff.”
