Cancer diagnosis renews spotlight on ‘cover up' Joe Biden's health while in office as new book reveals decline in mental capacity
Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis has increased scrutiny on the former US president's health while in office.
Condolences and well-wishes have flooded in since it was revealed that President Biden has been diagnosed with an 'aggressive' form of prostate cancer which has metastasised to the bone.
But the news has increased the spotlight on whether there was a 'cover up' by White House staff and the US media to conceal the true state of the former president's health when he was in office.
Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Sky News Australia that Mr Biden 'absolutely' would have had regular health checks while he was president, but this didn't mean they would have known about the cancer.
'Presidents are, as you can imagine, very closely watched in so many ways, by their medical teams and so forth, because of the importance of what they do for a living,' Mr Mulvaney said.
'But that being said, just because you're checked regularly doesn't mean that you can't get cancer in a hurry.
'Keep in mind, this is a very aggressive form of cancer … it wouldn't be at all unexpected to have regular checkups as a president, which you do, and then still have this pop up relatively quickly.'
However Mr Mulvaney, who served as White House Chief of Staff during President Trump's first term in office, said there were already plans for a congressional investigation into the state of Biden's health when he was president and whether there was a 'cover up' to conceal his declining mental capacity from the American people.
This follows the release of a new book, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again', co-authored by CNN host Jake Tapper.
'The book is tough. It just is,' Mr Mulvaney said, before pointing out it was written by someone who appeared to have participated in the cover up.
'Keep in mind that one of the gentlemen who wrote this is a CNN news presenter, and he's essentially writing a story about how the media covered up for Joe Biden when he was one of the leading voices doing it.
'I mean, you could go on the internet and find that dozens of clips where he literally attacked Republicans on his show for questioning Joe Biden's mental capability.
"So he was part of the cover up.
'And it's not lost on a lot of Republicans that, you know, how is it that this guy has now sort of found religion and decided to come forward and talk.'
Mr Mulvaney said that while international media outlets were talking about the former president's mental capacity for years, it was almost completely absent from mainstream American news outlets.
'It's not comfortable. I mean, Americans don't want to talk about the fact that the president might be limited in some fashion. Sometimes you do have to rely on the international press to sort of get a perspective from outside looking in,' he said.
'But now that the book is out, I do not think this, this cancer diagnosis today, will have any impact on the investigation that Congress will do.
'There's a great deal of sympathy for the former president … But that doesn't change what the media did, perhaps the White House did, and we'll get to the bottom of that here in the next several months.'
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