After Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis was shared, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and more sent their well wishes to the 82-year-old.
After former President Joe Biden’s team revealed he has an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, the current U.S. leader shared his reaction.
“Melania [Trump] and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis,” he wrote on Truth Social May 18. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill [Biden] and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris—who served with Biden and lost to Trump in the 2024 presidential election—echoed that sentiment.
“Doug [Emhoff] and I are saddened to learn of President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis,” she wrote on X. “We are keeping him, Dr. Biden, and their entire family in our hearts and prayers during this time. Joe is a fighter — and I know he will face this challenge with the same strength, resilience, and optimism that have always defined his life and leadership. We are hopeful for a full and speedy recovery.”
They aren’t alone in sending that strength.
“Cancer is the absolute worst,” Meghan McCain, whose dad John McCain died from brain cancer, wrote. “It is incredibly difficult for any family, anywhere that has to deal with it. Wishing nothing but healing, prayers, light and strength to President Biden and his family. I don’t believe times like these are appropriate for politics.”
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Added California Gov. Gavin Newsom, “Our hearts are with President Biden and his entire family right now. A man of dignity, strength, and compassion like his deserves to live a long and beautiful life. Sending strength, healing and prayers his way.”
The flood of social media support come just hours after the 82-year-old’s diagnosis was publicly shared.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” read a statement obtained by NBC News. “On Friday he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”
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“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” the messaged continued. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
For a closer look at who is by his side, read on…
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First Lady Jill Biden
Widowed at 30 when his first wife Neilia Hunter Biden was killed in a car crash along with their 13-month-old daughter Naomi in 1972, then-freshman Sen. Joe Bidenfocused on raising their sons, Beau Biden and Hunter Biden, and put romance on the back burner.
Really, it wasn’t even on the stove until Joe’s younger brother Frank Biden gave him Jill Jacobs‘ phone number a few years later.
“She gave me back my life,” Joe wrote of finding love again with the future first lady in his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep. “She made me start to think my family might be whole again.”
Joe and Jill married on June 17, 1977.
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Son Beau Biden
The president frequently invokes his late son, Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III, a former Army major and two-term Delaware attorney general who died of glioblastoma in 2015 at the age of 46.
“Beau had a strict code of honor,” Joe told the New York Times upon the release of his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad. “That may sound silly, but it’s true. My dad had an expression: ‘Never explain and never complain.’ I never once heard Beau complain. Not once.”
He recalled a night toward the end of Beau’s life when, Joe said, his son “had come face to face with his mortality. He watched me go through the loss of his mother and sister. And he didn’t want me to turn inward. He didn’t want me to give up on the robustness of life.”
In his eulogy for his brother, Hunter recalled his first memory of Beau: Waking up in the hospital next to him in 1972 after the car wreck that killed their mom and sister
Speaking at a National Guard/Army Reserve center named after his son the day before his inauguration in January 2020, Joe said how proud he was to be from Delaware.
“And I am even more proud to be standing here doing this from the Major Beau Biden facility,” he added. “Ladies and gentlemen, I only have one regret: He’s not here. Because we should be introducing him as president.” (Independent.co.uk)