First Lady Jill Biden, 74, revealed on June 2, 2026, that her husband, President Joe Biden, 83, is living with stage four prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones and will remain with him for life, a condition she described as difficult during an appearance on “The View” to promote her new memoir, “View from the East Wing.”
The diagnosis, which came in May 2025 after Joe Biden reported urinary symptoms to his doctors, fundamentally altered his prognosis because the cancer had already spread beyond the prostate, Jill Biden explained during interviews on both “The View” and NBC’s “Today” show, where she appeared on June 1, 2026, to speak with Craig Melvin.
“Craig, you’ve been through this with your brother; you know how tough it is,” she told Melvin. “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.”
When co-host Ana Navarro pressed her about her husband’s current condition, Jill Biden described a life that continues but under the shadow of advanced disease.
“He’s doing OK,” she said. “As probably everyone in this audience knows — because I’m sure you’ve all been touched by cancer — it’s hard, it’s hard. 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.”
A Diagnosis That Changed Everything
When the Bidens announced the diagnosis in May 2025, his office described the disease as “hormone-sensitive,” which it said allowed for “effective management.” 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 Joe Biden completed a round of radiation therapy after the diagnosis was made public.
Jill Biden 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 Jill Biden to the June 27, 2024, debate against then-candidate Donald Trump, whose halting performance accelerated calls within the Democratic Party for President Joe Biden to abandon his reelection bid. He withdrew in July 2024 after initially intending to run for a second term. Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination and lost to Trump that November.
Jill Biden said she received no advance warnings from her husband’s medical team before that debate 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.'”
In 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, President Joe Biden 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
When asked why she did not press her husband to step aside sooner, Jill Biden 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.”
But when asked whether she still believed her husband could have served four more years, 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.'”
