US President Joe Biden caused some confusion on Wednesday when he said, in a video that has gone viral that “I, and so many other people I grew up with, have cancer.”
The remark came during a speech about global warming in which Biden described emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Claymont, Delaware.
“That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Biden said.
The remarks were surprising as there had been no indications that the President is currently sick.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates referred The New York Post to a tweet from Washington Post columnist Glenn Kessler, who noted that Biden had “non-melanoma skin cancers” removed before he took office.
Fox News’ White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich pointed out that Biden’s 2021 health summary attributes past skin cancer to sun exposure.
“… President Biden did spend a good deal of time in the sun in his youth. He has had several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency,” said the health summary shared by Heinrich on Twitter.
Heinrich also said that a White House official told her that Biden was referring to past removal of skin cancer and had mistakenly stated in the present tense that he has cancer.
It remains unclear why Biden chose used the present verb tense to describe his experience with cancer.