By Molly Claire Goddard
2:39am PDT, May 22, 2025
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Joe Biden broke a key promise he made prior to becoming president.
Before the former commander-in-chief, 82, was
diagnosed with an "aggressive" form of prostate cancer and won the 2020 election, he vowed to be completely honest with the American people about his health. However,
Jake Tapper and
Alex Thompson's bombshell book
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up tells a different story.
Keep reading to hear about how Biden went back on his word…
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In a passage obtained by
RadarOnline.com of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, the CNN anchor recalled a question he asked Joe Biden during a September 2020 town hall about being completely transparent about his
health.
"If you're elected, you would be the oldest president ever. Will you pledge that, if you're elected, you will be transparent about your health?" Tapper asked. "All facets of your health, with urgency, so that we know?"
"Yes, when it occurs, when anything occurs," Biden answered. "And anything can happen. Anything can happen. I have become a great respecter of fate, a great respecter of fate. I have seen too much of it in my family related to accidents alone. So, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, I will be totally transparent in terms of my health and all aspects of my health."
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On Sunday, May 18, Joe Biden's team announced he was battling the life-threatening illness. "Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone," the statement from the Biden's camp read.
While Biden claims he only recently found out about his condition, many Americans wonder if he and the people around him knew about the state of his health prior to trying to run for president again last year.
"Oh yeah. He did not develop it in the last 100-200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021," oncologist Dr.
Ezekiel Emanuel claimed to MSNBC's
Morning Joe. "I don't think there's any disagreement about that."
Dr.
Howie Forman, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, public health management and economics at Yale, also believes Biden was aware of his frail state before leaving office. "It is inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the presidency," he said via
RadarOnline.com.
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After claiming that Joe Biden was not in the best shape to lead the nation for years, the current president, Donald Trump, continued to fuel the fire even more in his remarks.
"I think it's very sad, actually," Trump told reporters on Monday, May 19. "I'm surprised that the public wasn't notified a long time ago because to get to stage nine (Gleason score), that's a long time. Somebody is not telling the facts. It's a big problem."
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In Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's shocking tell-all, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, the reporters claim there were two versions of Joe Biden — one that was presented to the public and one that wasn't.
"The first one is the one that everybody got to know during his vice presidency," they write. "And the second one was kind of a non-functioning Joe Biden. And that non-functioning Biden would rear his head increasingly starting in, like, 2019, 2020. And then, as his term went on, more and more behind the scenes."
