White House Responds After Biden Seems to Suggest Having Cancer

A White House official tried to clarify remarks from President Joe Biden on Wednesday where he appeared to say that he currently has cancer while commenting on a forthcoming round of climate-related executive actions.

His comment was made during a speech about climate initiatives when he described emissions from oil refineries near his childhood Delaware home.

“I just lived up the road in an apartment complex when we moved to Delaware, and just up the road, a little school I went to, Holy Rosary grade school, and because it was a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove us rather than us be able to walk,” Biden said. “And guess what? The first frost, you know what was happening, you’d have to put on your windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window.”

“That’s why I and so [expletive] many other people I grew up with have cancer and why, for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Biden continued.

In response, a White House press official on Twitter suggested that Biden was referring to a previous doctor’s report saying he had non-melanoma skin cancers removed.

Confusion Over Past and Present Tense

White House spokesman Andrew Bates retweeted Glenn Kessler, the editor and chief writer of the Washington Post’s fact-checker, who said that Biden disclosed in a recent medical report (pdf) that he had non-melanoma skin cancers removed. Kessler, meanwhile, criticized the Republican National Committee for highlighting Biden’s exact words.

“This is what the President was referring to,” Bates said in response to Biden’s comment.

But in his comment Wednesday, Biden used a present verb tense to describe his experience with cancer, and he did not specifically make reference to the doctor’s report. Other social media users also questioned Kessler and Bates about

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