Former WH Doctor Gives Grim Outlook On Biden’s Cancer Prognosis
A top doctor to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump told the Washington Free Beacon that the prognosis for former President Joe Biden’s metastatic prostate cancer is bleak—and that the former commander in chief might die within a year.
Biden’s personal office shocked the world on Sunday by revealing that what had been termed as a “small nodule” was actually Stage 4 prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
Representative Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), who served as the president’s physician from 2013 to 2018, told the Free Beacon that Biden may not have much time left.
“This is not my area of specialty, but I have spoken to multiple urologists since this came out, and the general consensus is like, you know, it could be 12 to 18 months,” Jackson said. “Hopefully it’s longer than that, and I hope that they’re able to treat this effectively, and, you know, he lives many, many more years. But it’s far advanced.”
Jackson told the Washington Free Beacon that he regularly checked both Obama and Trump for the disease and believes Biden may have been diagnosed long before Sunday’s announcement.
“Every year I did an exam for President Obama, and every year that I did an exam for President Trump, I checked the [prostate-specific antigen],” he said. “We screened for prostate cancer. I think there’s a probability here that they knew [Biden] had prostate cancer some time ago and just didn’t tell the American people.”
“Treating prostate cancer with radiation or something like that, it doesn’t require you to be an inpatient,” he said. “I mean, people get that done as outpatients all the time. They go in, they spend a couple hours in the doctor’s office, and they’re released the same day. So, it’s absolutely conceivable that he could have been diagnosed and could have been treated without the American people knowing, if his doctor chose not to say anything and family chose not to say anything.”
“That’s definitely justification to follow him closely, and to continue to screen him every single year, aggressively, for prostate cancer,” Jackson told the Free Beacon.
NEW: Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), the former White House physician who served both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, told the Free Beacon that Joe Biden’s metastatic prostate cancer could leave him with as little as 12 to 18 months to live.
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 21, 2025
“Hopefully it’s longer than that, and… pic.twitter.com/0q3uHHqaxz
Several top physicians and medical experts have expressed astonishment that Biden’s prostate cancer was not found much sooner.
Not long after the news broke, leading experts began posing questions about the diagnosis. Donald Trump Jr. posted a screengrab of a statement from physician Dr. Steven Quay, who called prostate cancer “the easiest cancer to diagnose when it first starts and to watch it progress to bone metastases.”
Quay noted that routine blood tests recommended for men over 50 indicate how rapidly cancer can grow.
“It is inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the Presidency,” wrote Dr. Howie Forman, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, public health management, and economics at Yale.
He pointed out that the prostate-specific antigen test would have indicated he had cancer “for some time before this diagnosis,” considering its aggressive nature.
In February 2024, while Biden was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, his longtime physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, declared him “fit to serve” following a routine physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Forman noted that Biden “must have had a PSA test numerous times before” and concluded the late-stage diagnosis is “odd.”
That said, Dr. Vin Gupta, an NBC News medical contributor, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough on Monday that Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush all have records confirming easily accessible prostate exams.
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel also seemed to question the odd nature of Biden’s diagnosis announcement.
“This was found by physical examination by a prostate exam,” he said Sunday evening. “A lot of times, we find an elevation in prostate-specific antigen, PSA, and then we go after it.”
