Joe Biden says he would not have run for a second term if he had known he had cancer. The former president said so in an exclusive interview with People magazine, his first major sit-down since leaving the White House. He was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in May 2025, months after his presidency ended.
Biden, 83, spoke with People at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. He said he did not know he had cancer while he was president. “If I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer, I would’ve not gone forward” with a 2024 reelection bid, he said. He added: “I don’t think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running” for president. Biden was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer 118 days after leaving office in 2025. He has completed radiation treatment and is undergoing hormone therapy. He takes eight pills a day.
The statement reframes the final chapter of Biden’s presidency. Voters who questioned his fitness in 2024 now have the president’s own words confirming he would have stepped aside under different circumstances. It also feeds a live debate about age, health disclosure, and who gets to judge a candidate’s readiness for the job.
What Biden said about the 2024 race
Biden said the June 2024 debate against Donald Trump, where his halting performance alarmed Democrats, was “not very consequential.” He said he expected a second debate that never happened. He was 81 at the time of the debate, according to the Associated Press. He insisted he was able to perform his duties as president, and that age brought experience and relationships with world leaders. “The value I think I brought was I knew so many of the leaders,” he said. He turns 84 on Nov. 20.
The interview was published two days after the 2026 midterms, and Biden opened it by celebrating Democratic gains. “Look at the people we got elected: first women governors, first Black governors,” he said. He also said he believed he was “the best-equipped person to do the job” at the time.
The diagnosis and his treatment
Biden was diagnosed in May 2025 with stage 4 prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He announced it publicly that month. In the interview, he said two recent tests show the cancer has not spread beyond what it already was. He completed radiation and is on hormone therapy. He takes eight pills a day. “I’m not saying I’ll live forever,” he said, “but the point is that I have all my faculties.” He said the fight “looks very positive,” and that many people with his type of cancer live for another 10 or 20 years.
Did Joe Biden know he had cancer while he was president? No. Biden says he did not know. He was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in May 2025, 118 days after leaving office, and he announced it publicly that month.
His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, 75, described the daily work of caring for him. She makes sure he eats right, exercises, takes his medicine, and sees his doctor. She called being a family caregiver “emotionally, physically hard.” The couple mark their 50th wedding anniversary next June. Biden noted that 63 million Americans serve as family caregivers.
Screening, age, and the questions the interview reopens
Biden wrote in his memoir that he “was treated no differently from any other 82-year-old man in America. Maybe I should have been.” Standard medical guidelines do not recommend routine prostate cancer screening for men over 70. Biden said White House doctors followed the medical profession’s guidance. He said he had some discomfort, and that Jill thought the test should be done. “There wasn’t any particular [sign] except recurring pain,” he said.
He denied hiding his diagnosis: “We let the public know when I found out, when I knew what was going on.” The interview revives a question that dogged his 2024 campaign: whether candidates and presidents should disclose more about their health. Biden’s answer is that he followed the rules as they exist. His critics say the rules are the problem.
Hunter, the pardon, and the memoir
Biden defended the pardon of his son Hunter after the younger Biden’s 2024 conviction on federal felony gun charges and his guilty plea to federal tax charges. He said Trump “goes after people without any basis” and that he acted to protect his family. Hunter Biden has said the pardon damaged his father’s legacy; the former president disagreed.
Biden’s memoir, “Promise Me, America,” is out Nov. 17. He said he hopes Americans remember that he “meant what he said.” He also criticized the demolition of the White House East Wing for a new ballroom, calling it “beneath the country.” And he described a gracious letter Trump left him in the Oval Office after the 2020 election, saying it was “almost as if there were two Donald Trumps.”
The bottom line
Biden’s political career spanned more than 50 years, from the Senate to the vice presidency to the White House. The interview is his attempt to frame that record on his own terms, in the shadow of his 2025 cancer diagnosis and the federal investigations that followed his son.
