On Monday’s “PBS NewsHour,” NPR Senior White House Correspondent Tamara Keith discussed former President Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis and said that “we are in territory as a country where we have been for a very long time, which is, there is intense interest in presidents’ health, and presidents often conceal the full facts about their health from the American people.” And “This is a longstanding issue where the public wants to know. The White House is under pressure to release information, but it’s private health information.”
Co-host Amna Nawaz said, “[W]e’ve also seen Republicans pounce in a way that should have been expected, maybe. But Donald Trump Jr. has posted online, claiming that the diagnosis here was part of a wider cover-up around Mr. Biden’s health. He’s also repeating unfounded claims that Biden clearly had dementia. Is this the kind of thing that you see picking up steam among Republicans?”
Keith responded, “Well, President Trump himself has now also made unfounded claims about how President Biden must have known that he had cancer long before this was made public. I think that we are in territory as a country where we have been for a very long time, which is, there is intense interest in presidents’ health, and presidents often conceal the full facts about their health from the American people. President Kennedy did. There are questions about President Reagan. There are, obviously, questions about President Biden. This is a longstanding issue where the public wants to know. The White House is under pressure to release information, but it’s private health information. And we don’t know what we don’t know. And I think it’s pretty safe to bet that we don’t have the full picture as the American people.”
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