Biden reveals cancer diagnosis amid "cover-up" allegations.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 15 minutes.

ICYMI.

Last week, we announced Kmele Foster is joining the Tangle team (and the expansion of our team more generally). So, this week, we dropped the paywall on our Sunday podcast so you can listen to Kmele’s first episode with us for free. Kmele, Ari, and Isaac discussed today’s topic (Biden’s health) before news of his cancer diagnosis broke, the Democratic National Committee controversy, and Trump’s speech in the Middle East. You can check it out here.

Quick hits.

1. The House Budget Committee voted 17–16 to advance President Trump’s domestic policy bill after it initially failed to pass on Friday. Four Republicans voted “present.” (The vote)
2. Moody’s Ratings downgraded the United States’s triple-A credit rating, citing large fiscal deficits and rising interest costs. (The downgrade)
3. Israel launched a significant new offensive in the Gaza Strip as new discussions on a ceasefire agreement began in Qatar through Qatari and U.S. mediators. Hamas has reportedly offered to release nine hostages in exchange for a 60-day truce and the release of imprisoned Palestinians. (The latest) Separately, Mohammed Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike, though Israel has not confirmed his death. (The report)
4. In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport a group of men currently in immigration detention in Texas. The ruling sent the case back to a lower court with instructions to determine the kind of procedures detainees can use to challenge the removals. (The decision)
5. A Mexican navy sailing ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge, killing two people and injuring at least 17. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the bridge was not damaged, and the cause of the crash is under investigation. (The crash)
6. A bomb exploded outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, injuring four people and killing the suspected bomber. (The explosion)
7. New Jersey Transit and the union representing the state’s passenger-train drivers reached an agreement to end the union’s strike three days after it began. (The strike)
8. At least 28 people were killed in severe weather incidents in the lower Midwest and South over the weekend. (The storms)

Today's topic.

President Biden’s health. On Monday, the personal office of former President Joe Biden announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had metastasized to the bone. According to the statement, the cancer is “a more aggressive form of the disease,” but also “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.” Biden is now reviewing treatment options with his doctors. The diagnosis follows last Tuesday’s announcement that doctors had found a “small nodule” in Biden's prostate during a routine physical exam.

Democrats and Republicans shared well wishes with Biden and his family. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket in the final months before the 2024 election, posted on X, “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.” President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that he was “saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”

The former president’s diagnosis comes on the heels of new reports on his fitness while in office. On Friday, Axios published an audio recording of Biden’s October 2023 interviews with special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents. In the recording, the president has difficulty remembering notable dates and events, adding credence to Hur’s assessment of Biden in his February 2024 report as having “diminished faculties in advancing age” (Hur did not recommend bringing charges against the president). 

Furthermore, several new and upcoming books have shared accounts from Biden administration officials suggesting that the White House had attempted to cover up his physical and cognitive challenges throughout his term. Among other anecdotes from Biden’s time in office, these books report that in the lead-up to his June debate with then-candidate Trump, high-ranking Democrats urged the White House to cancel the debate due to concerns about Biden’s fitness. Separately, Biden’s advisers reportedly discussed the possibility that he would need to use a wheelchair in a second term.

Biden has steadfastly denied that he was unfit to serve as president or that his staff had shielded his well being from the public. In a May 8 interview on The View, he said that he took “responsibility” for Trump’s 2024 victory, but still believed that he would have won re-election if he stayed in the race. “I only dropped out because I didn’t want to have a divided Democratic Party,” Biden said.

Today, we’ll share reactions from the right and left to Biden’s health and the new reports about his time in office. Then, my take.

What the right is saying.

• Many on the right argue the media was complicit in covering up Biden’s health in office.
• Some say Biden’s declining fitness was evident in 2020.
• Others say the stories cannot be ignored just because Biden is no longer president. 

In Newsweek, Mark R. Weaver criticized “a doddering president and a complicit media.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper and others “claimed they missed the unmissable deterioration, but, in multiple instances when guests on Tapper's show pointed out President Joe Biden's frightening brain scrambles, Tapper pushed back with the passion of a paid partisan. His most audacious rebuff was that Biden's episodes could be dismissed due to a ‘lifelong stutter,’” Weaver wrote. “Tapper's stutter straw man is easily knocked over with just a few undeniable truths: reading stage directions out loud repeatedly isn't stuttering. Mixing up the leaders of other countries — either this time or this time — isn't stuttering. Wandering around aimlessly over and over again isn't stuttering.”

“Former Vice President Kamala Harris and a majority of the Biden cabinet could have—and clearly should have—publicly proclaimed what they already knew: Biden didn't even know the names of his closest staff or top appointees, much less comprehend the nuance of world crises and national policy challenges. Had they exposed that, they would've appropriately triggered Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, and Harris would have, at least temporarily, become acting president,” Weaver said. “It's clear why Team Biden as well as Tapper and the other Democratic cheerleaders in the press corps didn't bring sunlight to this rot. They knew it would increase the likelihood of sending President Donald Trump back to the White House.”

In The Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim argued “Joe Biden was unfit in 2020.”

“Did staffers hide the truth from the world? Did Democratic VIPs on Capitol Hill and elsewhere owe it to the country to say openly that they couldn’t support Mr. Biden’s re-election effort? The answer to both questions is yes, and some key figures in the administration had a duty, when they realized the extent of the president’s senility, to resign in protest,” Swaim wrote. “It wasn’t too much to ask that two or three high-profile Biden officials resign, explain to the public why they could no longer serve in good conscience, and take sinecures at Princeton or Harvard.”

“The argument in the press about when it became clear that Mr. Biden wasn’t up to the job—was it 2023? as early as 2021?—also makes me laugh. I witnessed Mr. Biden’s frailty during the 2020 primary and wrote about it… The first time I saw him, in North Charleston, I thought he might be having a stroke or a heart attack. He looked fine, but when he spoke—we’re more familiar with the gravelly whisper now than we were then—he was barely audible,” Swaim said. “Four years later, none of this seemed revelatory or shocking, so accustomed had Americans become to Mr. Biden’s slurred sentences, nonsense outbursts, falls and blank stares. Yet for four years top Democrats gave themselves fully to the obvious lie that he was fine.”

In National Review, John Fund wrote about “why the Biden health cover-up really matters.”

“A transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden was published last year, but the Biden White House tenaciously fought against releasing the tapes, citing ‘law enforcement’ concerns. We now know the real reason. The tapes reveal a president who can’t recall key facts, has to frequently pause mid-sentence, and changes the subject often,” Fund said. “There was indeed a massive cover-up inside the White House… aides admitted to each other that Biden was becoming so physically frail that he might need to use a wheelchair in his second term. But their primary concern appeared to be that nothing be seen that would endanger his reelection — or their own hold on power.”

“Will anyone draw any lessons from all this? I fear the answer is no, but there’s a chance that something worthwhile will come out of the congressional hearings that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has just announced,” Fund wrote. “At their best, congressional hearings can make use of depositions and subpoenas to force facts out into the open and give them prominence. Even Democrats, who were so eager to use congressional hearings to investigate the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, should realize that and cooperate.”

What the left is saying.

• Many on the left say the former president bears the brunt of the blame for the ongoing fallout from the 2024 race.
• Some suggest the media’s greater failure was in its coverage of Trump.
• Others say Democrats need to focus more on accounting for Biden’s policy failures.

In The Washington Post, David Von Drehle wrote “who is to blame for Biden’s gamble to run for president? Only Biden.”

“The questions gripping Washington lately, fueled by a new book from journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson: Why was former president Joe Biden allowed to run for reelection long after his sell-by date? And more salient, because this is Washington, where all things must be weaponized: Who is to blame?,” Von Drehle said. “First, the why. Biden was allowed to keep running because there was no working mechanism to stop him. Everyone knew that Biden’s age would be an issue — perhaps even the biggest issue — of the campaign. It had been an issue in 2020, when his status as the oldest candidate nominated by a major party led him to promise vaguely to serve as ‘a bridge’ to the next generation.”

“​​Two outdated Washington myths now shape the blame game. First is the myth of strong party leadership, which is a hangover from the pretelevision era,” Von Drehle wrote. “The second myth is the all-knowing press corps. White House reporters are not clairvoyants; they know as much as they can see and as much as people tell them, and no more… Ultimately, the questions of why and blame arrive at the same answer. It was Biden’s doing and Biden’s fault, and the price he and his circle will pay for their failed gamble against time is that the election of 2024 is his principal legacy.”

In The Guardian, Margaret Sullivan said “yes, the media’s Biden coverage was flawed. But its reporting on Trump was far worse.”

“With a new book out about Joe Biden’s failed re-election campaign, a media reckoning is in full swing. It goes something like this: mainstream journalism failed the voters. Reporters were complicit; they didn’t tell us how much the elderly president had declined,” Sullivan wrote. “And some of that is valid, no doubt… There’s plenty of blame to go around for Biden’s ultimate loss — and the horrors that it brought the whole world in the election of Donald Trump to a second term.”

“When is the reckoning coming for the failures to cover Trump effectively?,” Sullivan asked. “There were excellent stories about the blueprint for his second term known as Project 2025, but it was far from obvious whether news leaders stopped to ask if voters really understood the stakes… Horserace coverage prevailed, day after day. And then, when Biden’s decline became impossible to ignore — after that earth-shattering presidential debate last June — news organizations changed their tune. For weeks, there was nothing but ‘hey, Biden is old’ coverage, once again failing to put the emphasis where it belonged: on the dangers of a Trump presidency.”

In Bloomberg, Matthew Yglesias argued “Democrats have better issues to debate.”

“The Democrats needn’t succumb to a pointless what-did-you-know-and-when-did-you-know-it debate about Biden’s age. The public always thought he was too old, even if his team didn’t, and his infirmities were on plain display during Biden’s fateful debate with Trump and the subsequent flailing weeks,” Yglesias wrote. “What the Democrats need is a constructive what-did-he-do-and-why-did-he-do-it debate about Biden’s policies. And they can’t let the renewed focus on the age issue keep them from reckoning with the harder question of what their priorities are.”

“A governor, senator or even a former secretary of transportation will have a much easier job than a vice president of shaking off concern about personal complicity in a cover-up. But the question about policy is one for which every Democrat ought to have a thoughtful answer,” Yglesias said. “The nascent ‘abundance’ movement has the beginnings of an answer, but none of those loosely aligned politicians have drawn a specific contrast with Biden, and the main topics in that debate are wonky and technical rather than speaking to core questions of values and priorities.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Biden’s diagnosis is terrible, and I truly hope for the best for him during his fight with cancer.
• We should still scrutinize the reports about his issues during his presidency.
• A great deal of people insisted this was not a problem, but we should always remember to trust our eyes and ears over narrative.

First, and most obviously, I’m wishing the former president well and praying for him. A cancer diagnosis is a crushing experience for any family. Anyone who has seen the disease up close knows what he is about to go through, and it’s not a pleasant journey. He’ll need strength, excellent medical care, and the love of his family. Given all he’s done to fund cancer research through “moonshot” programs as vice president and as president, it would be a beautiful full-circle moment to see his life saved by the medical advances he pushed for.

At the same time, the president’s diagnosis does not mean we can ignore everything else we have learned in the last week. In responding to the news, longtime Democratic advisor David Axelrod said the conversations about Biden’s decline “should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s struggling through this.” Which, well, no. On the contrary, Biden’s diagnosis provides more reason to scrutinize the people who helped hide his mental and physical issues from the public. An advanced prostate cancer diagnosis is not unheard of, but it would be surprising for a sitting president’s medical team to miss the warning signs, which obviously invites suspicion.

One can hold a great deal of sympathy for Biden and his family in this difficult time while also maintaining a proper degree of skepticism and anger about all the information we have just become privy to. To recap just a few rather jarring revelations that have come out in the last few weeks:

Biden had a limited number of hours in each day where he could “reliably function” and reportedly experienced an increasing number of moments where he would freeze up, lose his train of thought, or forget the names of top aides or friends he had known for decades. His team spent significant time and resources trying to cover up this reality by choreographing all of Biden’s public appearances or exchanges with reporters, including limiting the president’s step count with detailed instructions on where he should walk after delivering remarks. Hollywood executives, including Steven Spielberg, tried to rework lighting and sound to make Biden appear less aged. His aides briefly considered whether the president needed a wheelchair, before dismissing the idea to protect his electoral prospects. His inner circle was, all the while, insulating him from bad polling data and insisting to the public he was sharper than ever.

In one particularly notable anecdote, Biden appeared unable to recognize George Clooney, not just one of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces but also a friend of over two decades. Sitting members of Congress who attended a 2024 fundraising event would recall privately (not publicly) that it appeared Biden didn’t know where to go and had to be ushered, by the arm, off stage by former President Barack Obama. Senator Chuck Schumer recounted several experiences of Biden calling him then forgetting why he picked up the phone in the first place. Reports of rambling episodes where Biden seemed to be “losing his grip” were circulating (privately) as early as September 2021, and many objective reporters knew what was going on as early as 2017. 

In June of 2021, just a few months into his presidency, I was one of a few journalists who asked out loud if Biden was okay. My motivation was pretty simple: I watched the president in real time and, after comparing him to what he looked like just two or four or six years before, I had some concerns. I gave the president plenty of deference; after all, his administration came out of the gate prepared and organized, and the government was not functioning as if it were some leaderless blob. But at the same time, Biden was exhibiting obvious, new, and pronounced difficulties.

The response from Tangle readers was ferocious. My inbox was inundated with angry emails accusing me of being a closet Trumper or conspiracy theorist, calling me ageist, suggesting I was ignoring Biden’s “stutter,” saying I was falling for “cheap fakes” (deceptively edited videos). Hundreds of people canceled their paid subscriptions and many more unsubscribed from the newsletter. But my eyes weren’t deceiving me; along with millions of others — including Biden’s inner circle — I was watching a very real decline.

In February of 2024, special counsel Robert Hur reported that he had found insufficient evidence to prosecute Biden for mishandling classified documents, but described the former president as having “diminished faculties in advancing age,” which would make him sympathetic and hard to convict. I praised Hur for including this detail in his report, as I thought concealing it would be a greater scandal than the unusual decision to note it. I also said the information he shared in his report is “apparent to most Americans who watch Biden in interviews or press conferences, which are already few and far between.” I was again lambasted for being ageist, or a conservative hack, or having a particular hatred for Biden. Last week, Axios obtained the audio of the Biden interview, and — yeah — you can judge for yourself. 

Then came the unforgettable presidential debate in June. By then, most Tangle readers seemed to harbor at least some concerns about Biden’s fitness. My inbox and our comments sections were less full of people angry at me and more full of people angry at Democrats. Our editorial staff was unanimously alarmed by Biden’s performance, and the next week I wrote that Biden should drop out of the race. Remember that at this time many people around Biden were still insisting he had a cold, was tired and was much sharper behind closed doors, and plenty of people were insisting after the debate he could get the job.

I don’t recount all this just to take a victory lap — sometimes that’s fun, but not when you’re right about the cover-up of a person’s declining health, one that deprived half the country of choosing their preferred candidate.

I’m putting it all in writing more to contrast the recent reports about Biden during his presidency with how it was discussed at the time, and to show just how effective the administration’s messaging and obfuscation was. I’m also writing it out to affirm it to myself, out loud and for the record, so I don’t forget it. It’s an odd thing, really, but after being gaslit by the Biden administration and his most ardent supporters for so long, there were plenty of times when I doubted myself — when I doubted my own senses because the backlash was so fierce and the excuses so confidently delivered. Even some of the journalists leading the crusade against Biden now, like Jake Tapper (whose book is generating the most buzz), were the very same people who dismissed allegations of his decline previously. Here, for example, is a highlight reel of Tapper mocking and demeaning guests on his show for broaching the then-taboo topic.

The lesson I’ve learned from all of this is that sometimes the obvious thing you are seeing is just the truth, and the politicians and media talking heads and public relations gurus trying to confuse you into seeing something different is all just noise. There are still good reasons to trust experts and institutions, but cases like this easily explain why that trust has eroded. I’m trying to remember that lesson for myself, and engrave it here in the Tangle pages, as a guidepost for the present and future. We will witness events in the coming years that beg us to recall this lesson, yet I’m sure we’ll find ways to confuse ourselves into believing what we want to be true. 

Take the survey: What do you think of recent reports about President Biden’s health while in office? Let us know!

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Several countries — including Canada, the UK, Germany, and Australia — have privatized aspects of their air traffic control (ATC) systems, reportedly achieving better outcomes than the U.S. system.

Given the long-standing issues with underinvestment in U.S. ATC and the substantial funding required to modernize it, why isn’t the Trump administration considering privatization as an option?

— Phil from Collingswood, New Jersey

Tangle: We don’t know that he isn’t. Trump could very well be considering privatizing air traffic control and the administration just doesn’t yet have a plan, or such a plan hasn’t yet leaked to the public.

What we do know, however, is that Trump has proposed the solution before. In 2017, at about the same time into his first term as now, President Trump suggested privatizing the ATC system. The context was somewhat different — the president had campaigned on a $1 trillion infrastructure reform, and he wasn’t reacting to an unfolding crisis with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) but a more standard frustration with Congressional gridlock.

In June 2017, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) sponsored a bill to privatize ATC, along with a few other provisions, which passed out of committee but was never advanced to a vote. Although some of the bill’s other provisions were incorporated into other legislation that was passed, the first Trump administration never really took up the cause and lobbied for its passage. 

Interestingly, there is a lot of ideological consensus over the proposal to remove ATC from the ATC’s purview — just disagreement over what “privatization” means. In the Cato Institute, Chris Edwards said Canada’s existing system provides a good analogy for how to privatize the system. In Brookings, Dorothy Robbins said Canada’s system shows how implementing a “public utility” model is the most appropriate fix for ATC.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

KJ Muldoon was born with a rare genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency, that is often fatal for newborns and can leave those who survive with mental and developmental delays. However, KJ recently became the first patient to have a custom gene-editing treatment to address the disorder, according to his doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After three rounds of infusions, the treatment appears to have been successful, and doctors are preparing to release him from the hospital. The novel approach was custom-designed for KJ’s illness, using CRISPR gene-editing technology to pinpoint the mutation in his DNA that caused the disorder. While the technology is still being studied and developed for other use cases in humans, medical experts say KJ’s case could represent a breakthrough to fix mutations in other places on a person’s DNA. The New York Times has the story.

Numbers.

• 313,780. The estimated number of new cases of prostate cancer in the United States in 2025, according to the American Cancer Society. 
• 35,770. The estimated number of deaths from prostate cancer in 2025. 
• 1 in 8. The approximate number of men who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. 
• 67. The average age of men in the U.S. when they are first diagnosed with prostate cancer.
• 3.3 million. The approximate number of men in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point and are still alive today. 
• 39% and 57%. The percentage of Americans with a favorable and unfavorable view of former President Joe Biden, according to a January 2025 Gallup poll. 
• 32% and 29%. The percentage of U.S. adults who said news organizations were giving too much and too little coverage, respectively, to Joe Biden’s age in an April 2024 Pew Research poll.
• 19% and 30%. The percentage of U.S. adults who said news organizations were giving too much and too little coverage, respectively, to Donald Trump’s age in April 2024.

The extras.

• One year ago today Isaac had just written a creative essay in praise of summer.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the U.S. News ranking of the best states.
• Nothing to do with politics: A Pennsylvania kindergartener accidentally handed out Jell-O shots to his class.
• Thursday’s survey: 2,625 readers answered our survey on Isaac’s take about accepting Afrikaner refugees with 73% agreeing we should accept them and other refugees more generally. “The key here is the ‘well-vetted’ part. We need MORE well-vetted immigration, not less,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

The owner of a local bookstore in Michigan faced a dilemma — how to transport 9,100 books to a new store location. In an inspiring demonstration of community, more than 300 volunteers showed up on the day of the move (including a 91-year-old woman) and created a bucket brigade to transport the books one by one, and in alphabetical order. They completed the job in under two hours. “It was just a joyful experience,” one volunteer said. “We were passing the books and noticing and commenting to each other, ‘Oh, have you read this one? I really enjoyed this one!’” NBC News has the story.

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