Hunter Biden disclosed in a BBC interview that his father's stage four prostate cancer has metastasized into his bones and beyond, a condition he described as painful and debilitating even as the 83-year-old former president continues making public appearances.
The 56-year-old former first son told the BBC on Friday that the disease has progressed well past the initial diagnosis Joe Biden's office announced in May 2025, less than four months after he left the White House. Hunter Biden did not hold back about the toll it has taken.
The disclosure marks the clearest public acknowledgment yet that Biden's cancer, first described by his office as an "aggressive form" discovered after urinary symptoms led doctors to find a nodule on his prostate, has entered a significantly more serious phase. Biden's office had confirmed last October that the former president was undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment, but neither Biden nor his medical team had publicly detailed metastasis until Hunter Biden's interview.
Hunter Biden's remarks to the BBC were blunt and emotional. The New York Post reported his key disclosure:
"The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further. It's very painful and it's very debilitating in many respects."
He went further, expressing frustration with his father's refusal to acknowledge the severity of his own condition. AP News reported his additional remarks:
"It's really sad to watch. The only thing that I'd say about my dad, about his health right now, is I wish he would complain more, because it's not good."
Despite the grim medical picture, Hunter Biden insisted his father remains engaged. "He's still doing his thing," he told the BBC. "He so believes in this country."
Hunter Biden has taken a more active public role in recent months, posting frequently on X and sometimes defending his father's political legacy. He has also spoken publicly about his father's pardon and its implications for the family.
The cancer revelation follows earlier comments from former First Lady Jill Biden, who told Kelly Ripa on her Sirius XM show "Let's Talk Off Camera" last week that she had noticed warning signs while her husband was still president. She described him getting up to urinate seven times a night and said she raised the issue with White House physicians.
"But when it continued when we got out of the White House, I said, 'Joe, we've got to go up to Jeff in Philly, something's wrong.'"
Jill Biden said she believed the issue had been addressed while they were in the White House. It was not until after Biden left office in January 2025 that the couple sought additional medical care in Philadelphia, referred to only as "Jeff in Philly", leading to the formal diagnosis months later.
She has previously revealed that her husband "will have to live with cancer for the rest of his life," explaining that he is now on "special medicines." Jill Biden has faulted the White House medical team for failing to catch the disease earlier.
Fox News reported that Biden received a Gleason score of 9, a grading scale used by pathologists to measure how aggressive prostate cancer cells appear under a microscope, with 10 being the most severe. Medical experts cited by Fox News believe Biden likely had the cancer throughout his presidency, which began in January 2021.
That timeline raises a straightforward question: if Jill Biden noticed symptoms severe enough to mention to White House doctors, and if the cancer was aggressive enough to warrant a Gleason 9 score, how did the diagnosis not come until months after Biden left office? Neither Biden's former White House physicians nor his current medical team have publicly answered that question.
Biden has remained visible in recent weeks despite the progression of his disease. In late June, he appeared with Maryland Democrats at their "Fight Back and Win" gala near Baltimore. Earlier that same month, he attended the opening of the Obama presidential library in Chicago.
At the Chicago event, Biden drew attention when he asked "Where's my granddaughter?" while standing at the lectern, a moment that added to ongoing concerns about his public appearances. The full context of the remark remains unclear.
Jill Biden confirmed on ABC's "The View" that medications and stage four cancer have made life "more difficult these days" for the former president, according to Fox News. Biden is also reportedly still working on a memoir titled Promise Me, America, planned for release after the midterms.
Biden's cancer was initially announced in May 2025 as stage four prostate cancer, the most advanced stage, with his office describing it as "aggressive." Breitbart confirmed the diagnosis came less than four months after Biden left the presidency.
The Gleason 9 finding, combined with the medical assessment that Biden likely carried the cancer during his entire term, puts a sharper edge on a question that dogged the Biden White House throughout his presidency: how much were the American people told about the health of the man in the Oval Office?
Biden's team spent years pushing back on questions about his fitness. Jill Biden's own account, that she noticed severe urinary symptoms in the White House and raised them with physicians, suggests the warning signs were present and acknowledged at some level, even if the formal diagnosis did not come until after he left office.
No member of Biden's medical team has issued a public statement confirming or elaborating on the metastasis Hunter Biden described to the BBC. Whether the family's disclosures are running ahead of the medical team's public communications, or whether the medical team has simply gone quiet, remains an open question.
Hunter Biden, meanwhile, has stayed in the public eye beyond his father's health. He has made claims about his own security situation and has appeared on multiple media platforms in recent months defending the Biden family name.
The Biden presidency was defined by a pattern: questions about the president's condition, followed by official reassurance, followed by evidence that the reassurance fell short. The cancer timeline fits that pattern with uncomfortable precision. Americans were told their president was fit to serve. Now his own family says the disease that was silently advancing during those years has spread to his bones, and the only honest word for that is a failure of transparency.
