Former President Joe Biden said in a recent interview that he wasn’t aware that he had cancer when he was in the White House—but that if he had known, he would have stepped down.
In an interview with PEOPLE, the former President was asked if he would have done anything differently during the 2024 election.
“What I can’t say, because there’s no evidence of it—if I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer, I would have resigned,” Biden, 83, replied. “I would’ve not gone forward, because I don’t think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running for [President].”
“But that wasn’t the case,” he continued. “I believe that on an objective basis, I was the best-equipped person to do the job.”
Biden’s office announced in May 2025 that he had been diagnosed a few days earlier with an aggressive form of prostate cancer and that tests indicated that the cancer had spread to his bones. He later had surgery and went through radiation therapy as part of his treatment.
When asked by PEOPLE about accusations that he kept his cancer diagnosis a secret while he was in office, Biden maintained, “I didn’t do that.”
“We let the public know when I found out, when I knew what was going on,” he said. “I wasn’t hiding it at all.”
Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, told BBC’s Newsnight in August that his father’s cancer had spread “further” and the condition was “very painful.” On Sunday, Biden shared that he wouldn’t be able to do as many public appearances as he had planned in conjunction with the release of his new memoir—”Promise Me, America,” which is coming out on Nov. 17—because of his health.
“My doctors continue to be encouraged by how I’ve responded to treatment,” he said in a post on X. “Some days are better than others. It hasn’t stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down. What that means is, unfortunately, I won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped. However, I’m hopeful the words on the page speak for themselves.”
Biden—who, until President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, was the oldest person to take the presidential oath of office in American history—grappled with controversy and scrutiny related to his age and the state of his health during his time in the White House. He faced criticism for seeking re-election, and calls for him to drop out intensified after his performance in the June 2024 presidential debate against Trump.
Weeks after the debate, Biden announced that he would suspend his re-election campaign and expressed his support for then-Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s nominee.
A YouGov survey conducted about a week after the 2024 election found that 59% of respondents felt that Biden’s “age and mental state” was “very important” to the outcome of the presidential race. About 47% said they thought that the debate between Biden and Trump was “very important” to the election result.
The former President told PEOPLE that “so far, the two tests that have been done show that the cancer is not metastasized beyond what it already was” and that he is taking “eight different pills” each day.
“I’m not saying I’ll live forever,” he said. “But the point is that I have all my faculties, I have access to all the things I had before and I feel good.”
