Here's Why President Biden Just Said He's Been Affected by Cancer

Alexis Jones
·3 min read
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US President Joe Biden speaks on recent mass shootings in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, on Thursday, June 2, 2022. Biden urged Congress to pass gun control legislation in a prime-time address as a bipartisan group of lawmakers negotiates a possible agreement following a string of high-profile shootings.
US President Joe Biden speaks on recent mass shootings in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, on Thursday, June 2, 2022. Biden urged Congress to pass gun control legislation in a prime-time address as a bipartisan group of lawmakers negotiates a possible agreement following a string of high-profile shootings.
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Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Joe Biden

The White House is clarifying that President Joe Biden has a clean bill of health after he phrased his past experiences with skin cancer treatments as though he currently has cancer in his recent speech about climate and clean energy.

PEOPLE confirmed with the White House that the president was not announcing that he was diagnosed with cancer in his speech on Wednesday, pointing the outlet to a tweet explaining that Biden meant he'd been personally affected by cancer, as he had non-melanoma skin cancers removed before he was sworn in as president.

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"How dumb is this tweet? Check out Biden's medical report. Before he became president, he'd had non-melanoma skin cancers removed. Has no one at @RNCResearch ever had this common procedure?" Glen Kessler, editor and chief writer of The Washington Post's "The Fact Checker," wrote in response to RNC Research's initial post.

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"Did Joe Biden just announce he has cancer? 'That's why I — and so damn many other people I grew up with — have cancer,'" RNC Research tweeted with a clip of the president stating the quote pulled.

Kessler further de-bunked the misinterpretation as he linked the president's medical report detailing the procedure and threaded below the message with a "screen shot from the report."

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In section 8 titled "Skin Cancer Surveillance, routine" under the "Current Health" section, the report states: "It is well-established that President Biden did spend a good deal of time in the sun in his youth. He has had several localized, non-melanoma skin cancer removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency. These lesions were completely excised, with clear margins."

The report concludes that "there are no areas for suspicious for skin cancer at this time," as a "total body skin exam was performed for dermatologic surveillance" and "several small areas" of concern "were treated."

As to how Biden's statement was misconstrued, the president was sharing a personal anecdote about how impure forms of energy such as oil have been linked to his own experiences with cancer and those around him.

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"My mother drove us and rather than us be able to walk and guess what? The first frost you know what was happening, Biden recounted in the clip. "You'd had to put on your windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window."

"That's why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation," he said.

According to C-SPAN, the president was delivering a speech in Somerset, Massachusetts, in which he addressed climate change as a "clear and present change."

The original video can be found on C-SPAN.