Longtime friends and allies of former President Joe Biden are growing worried about his health as he nears a year of treatment for aggressive prostate cancer, according to people close to him who spoke to The Washington Post. The concern persists despite aides projecting optimism about the 83-year-old's condition.
Those close to the former president have described themselves as "encouraged," but the picture painted by others tells a different story.
Two former Biden officials and an elected Democrat close to Biden told the Washington Post he has appeared more fatigued in closed-door interactions. His office has not released any major updates about his cancer prognosis.
Biden announced in May that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer with a Gleason score of nine, meaning it was likely to spread quickly.
He has been undergoing radiation and hormone therapy, and his office said the cancer was responding to hormone treatments, allowing for effective management. But his near-total disappearance from public life tells its own story.
Biden has not been seen in public often. Over the last year, his appearances have been limited to a handful of carefully chosen events:
That's it. For a man who occupied the most powerful office on earth just over a year ago, the silence is striking. His office says he has been able to continue working on his memoir, building out his foundation, and developing his presidential library while in treatment.
Whether that work reflects the output of a healthy man or a curated narrative designed to project normalcy is a question his allies seem to be asking privately, even if they won't say it publicly.
There's an obvious reason public assurances from Biden's team land with a thud: we've seen this before.
The concern around Biden's health doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in the long shadow of a presidency defined, in its final chapter, by questions about whether the American people were being told the truth about the man in the Oval Office.
A book on Biden's tumultuous presidency, co-written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios journalist Alex Thompson, accused Biden and his aides of covering up the extent of his health issues at the end of his term.
That accusation didn't come from the right. It came from mainstream media figures with deep access to the Democratic establishment.
Even Biden's own people haven't been kind. Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote a memoir that offered a scathing review of Biden and the Democrats. Former Vice President Kamala Harris authored her own, which accused Biden of being reckless in choosing to run for re-election.
When your press secretary and your vice president both publish books torching your judgment, the "everything is fine" line from your post-presidency office carries a certain hollowness.
Perhaps the most revealing detail in this story isn't what Biden's allies are saying. It's what the broader Democratic Party is not saying.
Democrats appear unwilling to defend the former president. There is lingering resentment over the 2024 election, with many in the party believing Biden's decision to remain in the race hurt the party's chances of retaining the White House and Congress. His eventual decision to drop out came just months before Election Day, giving Harris limited time to win over voters.
This is the political reality Biden now inhabits. A one-term president battling an aggressive cancer, surrounded by a shrinking circle of loyalists, while the party he led treats him less like an elder statesman and more like a cautionary tale.
The resentment isn't subtle. It's baked into the memoirs, the anonymous quotes, and the conspicuous absence of any organized Democratic effort to rally around him.
The contradiction is worth noting. Democrats spent years insisting that questioning Biden's fitness was a right-wing smear, a bad-faith attack, a cheap shot.
They called it ageist. They called it misinformation. Now those same Democrats are the ones whispering about his fatigue in closed-door meetings and publishing books about the cover-up they swore never happened.
Biden's office has not released any major updates on his prognosis. For a former president with stage 4 cancer and a Gleason score of nine, that absence of information is itself information.
The American public, which was misled about his cognitive decline while he held the nuclear codes, has earned a healthy skepticism toward vague reassurances from the same staff.
Cancer is serious. Stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body is gravely serious. No one should wish illness on anyone, and the human weight of what Biden and his family are enduring deserves acknowledgment regardless of political differences.
But the institutional questions remain. A political operation that spent years gaslighting the country about the president's capacity doesn't get to ask for the benefit of the doubt now. Trust, once spent, doesn't replenish on request.
Biden's allies are worried. His party has largely abandoned him. And his office is quiet. For a man who spent half a century at the center of American politics, the solitude of his final act speaks louder than any statement his team could release.
