Vice President Vance told reporters on Air Force Two during his return from Rome on Monday that former President Biden’s cancer diagnosis announced a day earlier shouldn’t stop deeper questions into whether Biden was fit for the presidency during his time in the White House.
“Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or at some point in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” Vance said.
Vance told reporters his concerns go beyond policy or politics.
“You can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with a recognition that, whether it was doctors or whether there were staffers around the former president, I don’t think he was able to do a good job for the American people,” he said.
Biden, who spent eight years as former President Obama’s vice president, announced through a statement from a family spokesman Sunday that he was diagnosed Friday with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bone.
The news came amid renewed questions about Biden’s mental acuity largely based on new books about his presidency and the release of audio from a 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur about his handling of classified documents while he was out of office.
President Trump, who wished Biden a “fast and successful recovery” in a social media post Sunday, has been one of the loudest voices questioning Biden’s health.
Vance told reporters that he doubts the public ever had a full picture of the former president’s condition.
“Why didn’t the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with? This is serious stuff,” he said. “This the guy who carries around the nuclear football for the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — this is not child’s play. And we can pray for good health but also recognize that if you’re not in good enough health to do the job, you shouldn’t be doing the job.”
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