Joe Biden

We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. Former U.S. President Joe Biden has released his first public statement regarding his diagnosis with an “more aggressive” form of prostate cancer. In a May 19 post on X (formerly Twitter), the 82-year-old shared a photo of him and his wife, Jill Biden , and acknowledged his recently disclosed health battle. “Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support,” the post read. It comes one day after Biden’s office announced the 46th president, who had been experiencing urinary symptoms, was diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. His cancer has a Gleason score of 9, which suggests it’s aggressive and more likely to advance and spread. However, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, which “allows for effective management.” Biden and his family are reviewing treatment options with doctors. The diagnosis comes amid increased discussion over Biden’s health during his presidential term, which ended in January. A new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson suggests that Biden showed signs of physical and mental decline while in office. Joe Biden is a longtime Democratic politician who served as the 46th president of the United States, from 2021 to 2025. His journey to the nation’s highest office began with his first election in 1970; the one-time attorney became the sixth youngest U.S. senator in history and eventually Delaware’s longest-serving senator. Beginning in 2009, Biden served two terms as the 47th vice president of the United States as part of President Barack Obama ’s administration. Biden’s third presidential campaign led to his election in 2020. Faced with increasing public scrutiny during his reelection effort four years later, Biden withdrew his bid and completed his single-term presidency. Long before reaching one of the highest political offices in the nation, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., born on November 20, 1942, spent his early years in the blue-collar city of Scranton in northeast Pennsylvania. His father, Joseph Biden Sr., worked cleaning furnaces and as a used car salesman. His mother was Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan. Biden credits his parents with instilling in him toughness, hard work, and perseverance. He has recalled his father frequently saying, “Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.” He’s also said that when he would come home sullen because he had been bullied by one of the bigger kids in the neighborhood, his mother would tell him, “Bloody their nose so you can walk down the street the next day!” One reason he was bullied was his stutter. “Other kids looked at me like I was stupid. They laughed,” Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep . “I wanted so badly to prove I was like everybody else.” They also mocked him with unkind nicknames like “Dash” and “Joe Impedimenta.” Early attempts at speech therapy when Biden was in kindergarten didn’t help, but he eventually overcame his stutter by memorizing long passages of poetry and reciting them out loud in front of the mirror. Biden and his younger siblings—Valerie, James, and Frank—were raised Catholic, and the future politician attended Catholic schools through high school. In Scranton, he studied at St. Paul’s Elementary School. In 1953, the year Biden turned 11, the family moved to Claymont, Delaware, a rapidly growing middle-class community outside Wilmington that was sustained primarily by the nearby DuPont chemical company. Biden attended the St. Helena School until he gained acceptance into the prestigious Archmere Academy. Although he had to work by washing school windows and weeding the gardens to help his family afford tuition, Biden had long dreamed of attending the private college preparatory school, which he called “the object of my de