President Joe Biden sparked speculation about his health Wednesday during a speech in Massachusetts where he said, “That’s why I, and so damn many other people I grew up with, have cancer.”
Joe Biden was in Somerset, Massachusetts visiting the former coal-fired Brayton Point power plant, to announce new actions on climate change.
Biden did not declare a national climate emergency, but said that the climate crisis is an emergency “and I will look at it that way.”
Clean Energy:President Biden was at Brayton Point on Wednesday. Here’s what he said about Somerset.
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Twitter reaction
Some people took to Twitter wondering if it was just a misspeak or if he actually announced he has cancer.
RNC research asked “Did Joe Biden just announce he has cancer?” with a quote from Biden’s speech.
Glenn Kessler, a Washington Post journalist quote-tweeted the RNC Research tweet to say “How dumb is this tweet? Check out Biden’s medical report. Before he became president, he’d had non-melanoma skin cancers removed. Has no one at @RNCResearch ever had this common procedure?”
Kessler is an editor and writer of The Fact Checker, according to the Washington Post website.
Does Joe Biden have cancer?
About two-thirds of the way through his speech in Somerset, Biden was telling a story about growing up in Claymont, Delaware. He was relating his memories of his mother wiping oil slicks off their car, to McCarthy’s stories of people in Somerset taking rags to wipe the coal dust off their cars.
Biden was advocating for clean energy and the removal of toxins and debris from the environment when he said: “That’s why I, and so damn many other people I grew up with, have cancer.”
There was no immediate response from the White House but many believe it was a gaffe, while others took to social media to question Biden’s health.
Andrew Bates, White House Deputy Press Secretary retweeted Glenn Kessler, the editor and chief writer of Washington Post’s Fact Checker, who noted that before Biden became president he’d disclosed on his medical report that he’d had non-melanoma skin cancers removed.
Joe Biden’s history with cancer causes
In February of this year, the White House announced President Biden would be relaunching his 2016 initiative Cancer Moonshot to end cancer. One of the goals of the program is to “reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years.“
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Joe Biden’s son died of cancer
In 2015, the then-vice president announced his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer at the age of 46. Joe Biden’s office said Beau had a relapse of a brain cancer first diagnosed and thought cured in 2013.
