Former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden said on June 2, 2026, that her husband, former President Joe Biden, 83, has stage four prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones and will remain with him for life, describing his condition as “hard” but noting he remains active.
During an appearance on “The View” to promote her new memoir, “View from the East Wing,” Biden, 75, told co-host Ana Navarro, “He’s doing OK,” she said. “As probably everyone in this audience knows — because I’m sure you’ve all been touched by cancer — it’s hard, it’s hard. It’s stage four, it’s in his bones, but he’s keeping up his schedule, he’s going to D.C. on Amtrak a couple of times a month, he’s speaking at Democratic rallies, he’s writing, so he’s active, he’s Joe.”
Joe Biden was diagnosed in May 2025 after reporting urinary symptoms to his doctors, and his office disclosed at the time that the cancer had already metastasized.
How a President’s Cancer Went Undetected
On “The View,” Jill Biden explained why a sitting president with access to the best medical care could have cancer progress undetected. The Bidens’ physicians, she said, followed American Urological Association guidelines that recommend against routine prostate-specific antigen screening for men older than 70. No prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test was done.
“Craig, you’ve been through this with your brother; you know how tough it is,” she said. “And I think if he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, that’s one thing, because that can be cured. But the fact that it metastasized to his bones, that makes it a whole different story.”
When the Bidens announced the diagnosis in May 2025, his office described the disease as “hormone-sensitive,” which it said allowed for “effective management.” But the cancer is among the most aggressive forms of the disease, and Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Center has said patients with metastatic prostate cancer typically live four to five years. Joe Biden completed a round of radiation therapy after the diagnosis was made public.
No Warning Before the Debate
The interviews revisited the June 27, 2024, debate against then-candidate Donald Trump, where Biden’s halting performance accelerated calls within the Democratic Party for him to abandon his reelection bid. He withdrew from the race in July 2024.
In a separate June 1, 2026, interview, Jill Biden told “Today” anchor Craig Melvin she had received no warnings from her husband’s medical team before that night.
“No one ever came to me and said, ‘Jill, Joe’s aging,’ or, ‘Something’s wrong,'” she said. “When all Americans saw that moment on TV at the debate, I mean, I was out of my mind, because I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s having a stroke.'”
In her memoir, she wrote that watching her husband onstage felt like watching “an AI hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching,” and wondered whether he had been drugged. She recounted that when the couple walked offstage, Joe Biden turned to her and said, “I really messed up, didn’t I?” She replied, “Yeah, Joe, you did.” The campaign held three more events that night, with the president delivering speeches at each.
A Changed Answer
Asked why she did not press her husband to step aside sooner, Jill Biden told Melvin “it had to be his decision.” She pushed back on critics — including actor George Clooney and former special counsel Robert Hur — who had publicly questioned the president’s fitness for office, saying her husband had aged the way anyone in his 80s ages.
“He aged. He did. He got older, and we all saw him aging,” she said. “There were the words that he would forget. But we were all aging.”
Whether she still believed her husband could have served four more years, however, she conceded the answer had changed.
“Well, not from what I know now,” she said. “I mean, my God, who knew? I mean, it was so shocking to get that cancer diagnosis. I was looking through travel magazines, like, ‘Oh, where are we going to go? What are we going to do?’ And then we get this cancer diagnosis, and I think, ‘What am I doing? Our whole life is changed now.'”