CNN guest makes very unfortunate Joe Biden prediction hours before former president's cancer diagnosis
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A top confidant of Joe Biden's took to CNN to argue that the former president could have served a second term - only hours before Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn made the ill-timed remarks to CNN's Jake Tapper on State of the Union Sunday morning, while casting doubt on accounts of Biden's mental decline.
Biden's office would later issue a statement that saying an 'aggressive form' of prostate cancer had metastasized to the point where it had spread throughout the former president's bones.
Speaking to Tapper on Sunday morning, Clyburn, 84, insisted his friend could have stayed in office through 2029.
'I talked to him on the telephone very often,' the long-serving South Carolina Democrat said. 'And I never saw anything that I thought was outside of the ordinary.'
Tapper asked Clyburn if he thought that Biden 'really would have been able to perform as president all the way through January 2029?'
'Yes, I thought that back then,' the congressman replied. 'I still think that.'
Tapper and political reporter Alex Thompson' spoke to some 200 sources for their new book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
Among them were multiple Biden advisors who expressed alarm or came forward with anecdotes detailing the former president's memory lapses in the buildup to the 2024 election - accounts Clyburn dismissed as fiction.
'The fact of the matter is, I saw Biden often,' Clyburn told Tapper on Sunday.
'I never saw anything I thought was unusual,' he continued. 'I never saw anything that allowed me to think that Joe Biden was not able to do the job.'
Clyburn - who last year received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Biden at the White House - admitted to being 'concerned' by Biden's debate performance against Donald Trump last year.
'A lot of us were a bit concerned about his schedule in the run-up to the debate,' he said.
Clyburn chalked the performance up to factors beyond the president's control, calling it the result of 'preparation overload' brought on by his aides.
'They were cramming at the end, into a four- or five-day period, [all of the] preparation for the debate,' the congressman said.
'The question is, is this a condition, or is this an incident?' he asked.
'These kinds of concerns are out there, but none of us thought that there was anything here that created any suspicions of any prolonged condition.'
Axios, the news site that employs Thompson, on Friday published new audio from a 2023 meeting between Biden and his special counsel, Robert Hur, who had been investigating the commander-in-chief's handling of classified documents.
It suggested Biden had been experiencing at least some difficulty answering simple questions and important dates, including some surrounding the death of his son, Beau.
Clyburn told Tapper that he did not view the recordings as a cause for concern, and that Biden's cognitive capabilities were as strong as ever.
Tapper asked whether Clyburn believed his party's current 'low standing' stems from similar stances within the party.
'It very well could have. I haven't looked at the numbers behind the numbers to come to any conclusion as to what exactly is going on here,' the congressman replied.
'I have talked to people, talked to students,' he continued. 'And people still feel that Joe Biden had the capacity to do the work that needed to be done.
'They still feel that Joe Biden was a good president. And I do as well.'
He added: 'But these people are also concerned when they look back at those tapes, they remember the debate. I have no way of knowing which one is true.'
Hours later, Biden officials revealed the cancer diagnosis.
The cancer had already metastasized and spread to his bones, the statement said.
The announcement came a week after reports revealed that a 'small nodule' was found on Biden's prostate that needed 'further evaluation.'
