Biden says cancer treatment sometimes slows him; health will limit book promotion
In the first excerpt of his White House memoir, 83-year-old Joe Biden accused 80-year-old Donald Trump, his predecessor and successor, of leading the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Biden said Trump’s “years of lies” about his 2020 defeat to Biden and the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol should “follow him to his grave.” The Atlantic published the excerpt Monday, and Biden, the 46th president, is scheduled to release the full memoir, Promise Me, America, on Nov. 17.
In a lengthy social media post Sunday, Biden pitched the memoir as the best way he could explain his presidency, “the challenges we faced, the decisions I made and why I made them.” He urged people to let the book speak for him. Months after leaving office, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He opened up about his condition in the Sunday post, saying he “won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped.” Biden said his doctors “continue to be encouraged by how I’ve responded to treatment.” But he acknowledged, “Some days are better than others. It hasn’t stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down.” He said his activities promoting the book will be limited because of his health.
In the excerpt, Biden wrote that “Donald Trump led an insurrection,” describing the attack by Trump supporters as Congress met to certify the 2020 election Biden won. Biden wrote that Trump’s goal was to remain in power after the American people had voted him out of office. He rejected the description of the people involved as “peaceful protesters” and wrote, “They came armed to stop the official certification of a legitimate election.” Biden also criticized Trump for later issuing more than 1,500 pardons of the offenders.
Biden argued that Trump and his supporters continued to posture as law-enforcement supporters while ignoring violence against officers. He wrote: “You don’t get to turn a blind eye to cops being punched, speared, sprayed, and brutalized and call yourself a friend of law enforcement.” He added: “What Trump did on January 6, 2021, should never be forgotten. It should follow him to his grave.”
Biden wrote that Trump has deeply damaged the country and world with an administration determined to “tear down institutions and inflame hatreds.” He also lamented Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and the administration’s aggressive reversal of many Biden policies, especially those intended to address climate change.
Biden wrote that all presidents must confront a feeling that their legacy is vulnerable to the pendulum of politics and the whims of their successors. “In my case, that feeling was magnified by the dismissive and destructive nature of Donald Trump, who seemed unable to tolerate the idea that someone else’s accomplishments might be worth building on rather than tearing down,” he wrote.
In the excerpt, Biden recounts an unusual Oval Office meeting with Trump days after the 2020 election, well before January 6. Trump told him, “You know, Joe, if it weren’t for politics, I believe we’d be good friends,” according to Biden. Trump also commented “that he’d been relieved he didn’t have to run against me,” Biden added.
Biden said he used the meeting to give Trump “a tour of the world,” covering the Ukraine-Russia war, NATO alliances, Israel and Gaza, and China-U.S. relations. Biden said Trump “focused on the personalities” of world leaders rather than the substance of international relations. The two-hour meeting left Biden worried that Trump would dismantle much of his presidency.
Trump’s opening weeks, including his Day One executive orders and what followed, confirmed Biden’s worries about a “crueler government” that “tried to tear down institutions and inflame hatreds” and a president who “took a wrecking ball to our traditions.”
The memoir’s release comes on the heels of Democrats winning broad House and Senate majorities in the midterm elections and flipping control of several statehouses. The Associated Press characterized those results as “a comprehensive rebuke of Trump’s second presidency” and said Trump’s return to power two years earlier was “a rejection of Biden’s one White House term.” Many voters still held skeptical views of Biden’s presidency and his party.
During his four years in office, Biden confronted the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout and worked to restore global alliances that Trump had frayed. Biden also faced widespread concerns about his age. Public polling when he dropped his reelection bid showed him trailing Trump, and the Associated Press reported that Democrats pushed him to yield out of fear that he could not win. Biden abandoned his bid after a June 2024 debate with Trump. The Associated Press linked lingering inflation and other concerns to Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss to Trump that November.
The memoir’s title echoes Biden’s earlier book, Promise Me, Dad, which he wrote about his son Beau Biden’s cancer and death. The Associated Press said the parallel implicitly acknowledges the former president’s age, condition and the reality that he may not have a long post-presidency to see the direction of the country and the evolution of his legacy.
In that first book, released between Biden’s vice presidency and his 2020 presidential bid, Biden explained that the title came directly from a father-son conversation around Thanksgiving in 2014. He recalled Beau saying: “Promise me, Dad. Give me your word that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right.” Beau Biden died six months later.
In his Sunday post, Biden repeated an argument he made often while campaigning and during the presidency, saying the U.S. is unique because it was “built on an idea” that “all of us are created equal.” He concluded: “Promise me, America,” that “we’ll never forget it.”