First Lady Jill Biden said her husband, President Joe Biden, is living with stage four prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones and will be with him for the remainder of his life, delivering the update on June 2, 2026, during an appearance on “The View.”
The 74-year-old told co-host Ana Navarro that the president, 83, is “doing OK” despite the diagnosis, maintaining a schedule that includes traveling to Washington on Amtrak a couple of times each month, speaking at Democratic rallies and writing.
“As probably everyone in this audience knows — because I’m sure you’ve all been touched by cancer — it’s hard, it’s hard,” she said. “It’s stage four, it’s in his bones, but he’s keeping up his schedule, he’s going to D.C. on Amtrak a couple of times a month, he’s speaking at Democratic rallies, he’s writing, so he’s active, he’s Joe.”
Dr. Biden appeared on the ABC program to promote her memoir, “View from the East Wing,” one day after she spoke with Craig Melvin on the “Today” show on June 1, 2026.
A Diagnosis That Changed Everything
President Biden was diagnosed in May 2025 after reporting urinary symptoms to his doctors, and his office disclosed at the time that the cancer had already metastasized. When the Bidens announced the diagnosis, his office described the disease as “hormone-sensitive,” which it said allowed for “effective management.”
Speaking on the “Today” show on June 1, 2026, the first lady told Melvin that the metastasis fundamentally altered the prognosis.
“Craig, you’ve been through this with your brother; you know how tough it is,” she said. “And I think if he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, that’s one thing, because that can be cured. But the fact that it metastasized to his bones, that makes it a whole different story.”
But the cancer is among the most aggressive forms of the disease, and Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Center has said patients with metastatic prostate cancer typically live four to five years. President Biden completed a round of radiation therapy after the diagnosis was made public.
She also offered a pointed explanation for how a sitting president, with access to the best medical care in the world, could have a cancer progress undetected. The Bidens’ physicians, she said, followed American Urology Association guidelines that recommend against routine prostate-specific antigen screening for men older than 70. No PSA test was done.
Revisiting the June 2024 Debate
The interviews also returned the first lady to the most consequential night of her husband’s political career: the June 27, 2024, debate against then-candidate Donald Trump, whose halting performance accelerated calls within the Democratic Party for President Biden to abandon his reelection bid. He initially intended to run for a second term but withdrew in July 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination and lost to Trump that November.
The first lady told Melvin she had received no warnings from her husband’s medical team before that night.
“No one ever came to me and said, ‘Jill, Joe’s aging,’ or, ‘Something’s wrong,’” she said. “When all Americans saw that moment on TV at the debate, I mean, I was out of my mind, because I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s having a stroke.’”
According to passages from her memoir, she wrote that watching her husband onstage felt like watching “an AI hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching,” and wondered whether he had been drugged. She recounted that when the couple walked offstage, the president turned to her and said, “I really messed up, didn’t I?” She replied, “Yeah, Joe, you did.” The campaign held three more events that night, with the president delivering speeches at each.
Defending the Decision to Stay In
Asked why she did not press her husband to step aside sooner, the first lady told Melvin “it had to be his decision.” She pushed back on critics — including actor George Clooney and former special counsel Robert Hur — who had publicly questioned the president’s fitness for office, saying her husband had aged the way anyone in his 80s ages.
“He aged. He did. He got older, and we all saw him aging,” she said. “There were the words that he would forget. But we were all aging.”
Whether she still believed her husband could have served four more years, however, she conceded the answer had changed.
“Well, not from what I know now,” she said. “I mean, my God, who knew? I mean, it was so shocking to get that cancer diagnosis. I was looking through travel magazines, like, ‘Oh, where are we going to go? What are we going to do?’ And then we get this cancer diagnosis, and I think, ‘What am I doing? Our whole life is changed now.’”
