When news broke about former President Biden’s cancer diagnosis and most Democrats were extending well wishes to the former president, one source wrote to say something different: “This news would validate everything Trump talked about during the campaign.”
“How long until he blasts Biden for lying to the American people?” the source added.
For President Trump, it took longer than some anticipated.
He greeted Biden’s tragic news with sympathy: “Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
That goodwill lasted less than a day.
On Monday, when Trump was asked about his thoughts on Biden’s diagnosis, Trump took off the gloves.
“I think it’s very sad,” the president began as part of a rambling response on Biden. “Actually, I’m surprised that, you know the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage 9, that’s a long time.
“I think the doctor said he’s just fine, and it’s turned out that’s not so — it’s very dangerous for our country,” he continued, adding that it should be required for presidents to take cognitive tests in office.
“Somebody is not telling the facts,” he continued. “That’s a big problem.”
On Tuesday, Trump took things to a whole new level, accusing Biden and his closest advisers of using an autopen to put in place border policies without Biden’s consent or knowledge.
The move telegraphs a new strategy that Trump may try to use against Biden, particularly as a rash of books has come out — including this author’s — questioning Biden’s mental acuity while he was president.
“We’re going to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation,” Trump told a gaggle of reporters while appearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a private meeting with House Republicans.
“Who was operating the autopen?” Trump said. “You know who signed it? Radical-left lunatics who were running our country. And the autopen signed it.”
Trump spent the entirety of the 2024 campaign — even after Biden had dropped out of the race — calling his two-time rival “Sleepy Joe.” For years, he maintained that Biden, as he put it, wasn’t “playing with a full deck of cards.”
Trump blasted him for not being able to “put two sentences together.” And he mocked him for not being able to find the stairs of the stage.
“Does anybody think he’s going to make it to the starting gate?” Trump said at a rally in 2023.
He went on to mock Biden: “Look, here’s the stage. I’ve never seen this stupid stage before. But if I walk left there’s a stair and if I walk right, there’s a stair. And this guy gets up, where am I? Where the hell am I?”
While Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a separate issue from the narrative around his mental acuity, even Democrats acknowledge that it hits them at their biggest weak spot right now: credibility.
Since their devastating loss in November, Democrats have been trying to figure out how they lost not only the White House but both the House and the Senate.
And some have concluded that voters, in the end, didn’t buy what Democrats were selling. And Biden’s infamously bad performance on the debate stage last year and his adviser’s efforts to try and paper over it only added to their credibility problem.
On Monday, former Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who challenged Biden during the Democratic primary last year, accused Biden and his advisers of announcing the diagnosis to deflect from the scrutiny Biden has received in recent weeks.
“I don’t think it’s coincidental that this was announced this week,” Phillips told The New York Times in a Monday interview. “It’s hard to comport otherwise.”
While Democrats largely have advocated for giving Biden and his family the space he needs given the diagnosis, a few voices were far less sympathetic.
They wondered aloud if Biden and his close advisers knew about the diagnosis — which was already at Stage 4 and had spread to his bones — well before leaving office.
“Look, I despise Trump with every fiber in my being but here’s an honest question: Can you trust the Democrats right now?” one Democratic strategist said Tuesday. “I don’t think so.”
The strategist said while Trump speaks mistruths “in basically every line,” what he was arguing about Biden — then and now — isn’t wrong.
“How can you listen to what he’s saying and argue?” the strategist added. “You can’t. And there’s the problem.”
“That’s why we lost and that’s why we’ll keep losing unless we change.”
Amie Parnes covers the White House and presidential politics for The Hill. She is also the co-author of several bestsellers, including the recent “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.”