Joe Biden has very casually announced that he has cancer.
Speaking in Delaware about pollution, he said:
Because it was a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove us and rather than us be able to walk. And guess what, the first frost: you know what was happening. You had to put on your windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window – that why I am so damn many other people I grew up have cancer and why camp for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.
I’ve watched the longer clip and he does not correct himself. This does not appear to be a “gaffe.”
The White House made no denial of the claim by Joe Biden that he has cancer, and even the fact-checkers are not outright claiming that he does not have cancer.
The Jewish head of Washington Post’s fact-checking group, Glenn Kessler, attacked a Republican account that posted the clip, claiming that Biden had non-melanoma skin cancers removed in his past.
That is a very pompous tone. Yes, we all know people who have had some form of skin cancer. White people get this a lot, and most of us go every year or two to have our moles checked, because they can become cancerous. This comes from the fact that racial differences are actually a real thing, and we have white skin so we can absorb enough vitamin D into our skin while living in a cold climate where most of our skin surfaces are covered by furs. Obviously, the ice age is over, and many of us live closer to the equator than we did in prehistoric times. So we are all familiar with skin cancers (which usually are melanoma, I’m not sure why Kessler specified non-melanoma).
There are many reasons not to call someone “dumb” for not understanding that he meant he’d previously had skin cancer:
He spoke in the present tense. There was no immediate White House denial. He was talking about air pollution in connection to cancer, and though air pollution is linked to cancer, it is not linked to skin cancer. Skin cancer is caused by UV rays on the skin. (So actually, if anything, in a place with significant smog that is blocking out the sun, you’d be less likely to get skin cancer.) At time of writing (more than twelve hours after Biden’s announcement that he has cancer), the White House has not issued an official statement. The closest thing to that is Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates responding to the Kessler tweet, saying he was referring to previous cancerous skin growths.
At this point, the strangest element is the lack of an official White House denial. Maybe they will make one later (I assume they will, regardless of the truth), but not making one immediately is simply bizarre.
I think Joe Biden probably really does have cancer.