Jill Biden indicated Tuesday that former President Joe Biden is struggling with his cancer treatment and admitted she doesn’t know if he could have completed a second term if he had won re-election in 2024.
The former president was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer that had spread to his bones in May 2025, after he left the White House. He completed radiation therapy in October.
“Cancer is really tough,” Jill Biden told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” while promoting her memoir “View from the East Wing,” out now.
“I would say he’s doing OK,” she added. “But cancer takes its toll. He gets tired a little more often, but I don’t know, it’s been, it’s been tough.”
She also expressed confusion about why Joe was not diagnosed sooner, saying: “We did have amazing health care in the White House, but somehow this was missed.”
The former first lady conceded that doctors followed recommended guidelines that discourage prostate cancer screenings in men over the age of 70.
In the book, Jill Biden recounts that her husband woke up frequently to use the bathroom during the night throughout their final year at the White House.
But, she wrote, she respected his privacy and only spoke to his doctors about her concern and did not address it with her husband.
The couple didn’t talk about their private health concerns, she noted, pointing out she didn’t speak to him about her menopause symptoms.
“Knowing that Joe would prefer to speak about any urological issues with his male doctors rather than his wife, I alerted one of them to make sure they knew,” she wrote, adding that “Now that the doctors had been made aware of the issue, I trusted that Joe would be examined and treated. But as far as I could tell, the issue persisted. Even knowing this, I never imagined that the cause of this very common symptom of age would turn out to be cancer.”
After Biden left office, his symptoms got worse, and she wrote that she encouraged him to see a urologist, who diagnosed his cancer.
“One of the questions we’ve been asked is why Joe hadn’t had a recent prostate exam. That was a question I had, too,” she wrote.
Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive health became a defining issue of his presidency.
“We had a whole team of doctors around us,” Jill Biden said on “Morning Joe.”
Those same doctors — the ones she questioned about missing her husband’s prostate cancer — also cleared Joe Biden following his final debate performance.
The former president’s performance that night — when he fumbled for answers and looked confused — left Jill Biden “scared to death,” she said.
But, she added, “we got off the stage, and I went to get my stuff. He was checked out by the doctors, they said, ‘He’s fine.’”
When the “Morning Joe” hosts asked her if Joe Biden could have served until January 2029, Jill Biden responded: “I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that.”
However, Jill insisted that “I believe he would have beat Donald Trump in that election” had be not dropped out on July 21, 2024.
The former first lady otherwise declined to discuss the current president during the wide-ranging interview.
