Latest news with #PromiseMe
NZ Herald
21-05-2025
- Health
- NZ Herald
The White House doctor in the picture over Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis
Among their biggest jobs is to perform an annual physical exam performed at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre to determine if the President is fit for office. Stringent and thorough, they test everything from the President's general health, to their neurological and cognitive ability. For decades, the White House has publicly released the results of the President's annual physical, listing their medications and other basic details about their health status. But administrations have great discretion over what to include in the releases, given that there is no federal law requiring US presidents to release their health records. In turn, some reports have faced questions over their accuracy. At the centre of Biden's medical care is Dr O'Connor, who has had a close relationship with the Biden family that dates back to 2009. The man Biden simply calls 'Doc' treated Biden's mother after she fell ill while recovering from hip surgery. Years later, he is said to have consulted with Biden's niece about an eye problem. His relationship with Biden grew as he shadowed the medical team involved in the treatment of his son Beau's brain cancer. As Beau's condition worsened, O'Connor was the family's 'eyes and ears' at the hospital, according to the memoir Promise Me, Dad. He would go on to become a voice of reason for the former President. When Biden developed a fever before a trip to Central America, he described in his memoir how O'Connor urged him not to travel and to rest instead. 'Right now, you look like s***. I can't make you not look like s***,' Biden recounted. He ultimately took this advice. He was initially contracted to be Biden's physician for just six months when the Obama administration began in 2009. 'That didn't work out and, so, I ended up doing the whole eight years with him,' O'Connor joked in an interview last year with the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine about his role as the President's chief physician. Biden brought O'Connor back to the White House when he became President in 2021. 'I retired and had a plan, and here I am again,' O'Connor, who grew up in New Jersey, said at the time. Dr O'Connor worked closely with Biden's brother Outside of the White House, O'Connor is said to have worked closely with James Biden, the President's brother, at a company that operated rural hospitals. The stocky former army surgeon was always close to his number one patient, ready to provide care as needed though few outside the building would know who he is. But Biden's politically crippling debate performance changed all that. It was he, just four months before the disastrous debate that unfolded in front of that world, who had overseen Biden's most recent physical exam in 2024 insisting the President at the time 'continues to be fit for duty and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations'. Trump questions medical assessments Since then, a new book based on the accounts of White House insiders, Original Sin, claimed that aides shielded the public from the extent of Biden's decline. Donald Trump questioned the medical assessments carried out by Dr O'Connor during a press conference in the Oval Office on Monday evening. He said: 'I think that if you take a look, it's the same doctor that said that Joe was cognitively fine. 'There was nothing wrong with him'. If it's the same doctor, he said, there was nothing wrong there, and that's being proven to be a sad situation.' 'And I think somebody is going to have to speak to his doctor if it's the same or even if it's two separate doctors. Why wasn't the cognitive ability? Why wasn't that discussed? And I think the doctor said 'he's just fine', and it's turned out that's not so, it's very dangerous,' he added. Dr Zeke Emanuel, vice-provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania told The Daily Telegraph: 'We have a long history of where the illnesses of presidents have been hidden from the public. 'We need an independent group of doctors, three doctors, not chosen by the president and not politicised.'
Hindustan Times
21-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
What is cancer-stricken Joe Biden's net worth? A journey from ‘Middle-Class Joe' to millionaire
Joe Biden, the former President of the United States, is still an important person in American politics. But people are also interested in his personal money matters—especially after his recent health news and what he's been doing since leaving office. For many years, Biden called himself 'Middle-Class Joe' because he didn't have as much money as many other people in the US Senate. He mostly lived on his government salary and the value of his home. But things changed after he finished his time as Vice President in 2017. Like many former leaders, he started making more money from book deals, giving speeches, and working with universities. Between 2017 and 2019, Joe and his wife, Dr Jill Biden, made several million dollars from their books and speaking events. Joe wrote 'Promise Me', 'Dad', and Jill wrote 'Where the Light Enters'. Both books sold well. Also Read: Joe Biden shares smiling selfie with Jill and their cat in first post since cancer diagnosis A big part of the Bidens' money comes from their homes. They own two houses in Delaware—one in Wilmington where they live most of the time, and a beach house in Rehoboth Beach that they bought in 2017. The beach house's value has gone up since then. These two properties make up a large part of their wealth, along with their savings, investments, and retirement money. • Jill Biden's job as a teacher at a college in Northern Virginia • Money made from selling their books • Payments for speeches and events • Government pensions from Joe's time as a senator, vice president, and president Joe also gets a special pension for being a former president. This gives him a steady income, along with office space and security. Even though he used to say he wasn't rich, he now has financial stability like other former top officials who earn money after leaving office. With their homes, book money, pensions, and special appearances, Joe Biden's estimated wealth in 2025 is between $9 million and $10 million.
New European
19-05-2025
- Health
- New European
The plot to fool America
Naturally, the then vice-president was poleaxed by grief. But he never forgot the pledge that Beau insisted he make: 'You've got to promise me Dad, that no matter what happens, you're going to be all right'. He understood that his son was urging him not to 'retreat from my obligations to the wider world'. In his memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, Joe Biden writes movingly of his son Beau's death in 2015 from brain cancer at the age of 46. Among the causes to which he then devoted himself was cancer research: 'we would create and fund a Cancer Moonshot to reinvent the systems for prevention, research, and care, bringing together the best clinicians, scientists, and other experts to double the rate of progress and deliver real outcomes for patients. Why couldn't we end cancer as we know it?' Now, a decade after Beau's death, Biden has been diagnosed with the same disease: in his case, an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. Though his condition is incurable and such news is grim under any circumstances, the statement issued by the former president's office on Sunday indicated that the cancer 'appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management'. This will probably involve treatment with androgen blockers, which can slow the growth of tumours, combined with bespoke chemotherapy, advanced radiotherapy and the latest forms of immunotherapy. The very science that Biden has valiantly championed for many years may help increase his life expectancy. And this is precisely why David Axelrod, former chief strategist to Barack Obama and longtime critic of Biden's bid to seek re-election, was wrong to say on CNN on Sunday that the recent debate about his cognitive and physical decline while he was president – ignited by one new book in particular – should now be 'more muted and set aside as he's struggling through'. The very science to which Biden is turning is rooted in a dispassionate commitment to the truth, to evidence and to forensic investigation. Yes, a sense of decorum is essential to any civilised society. But it should not be misappropriated as an excuse to evade difficult discussions or to bury awkward revelations. In Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again (Hutchinson Heinemann), CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson describe nothing less than a historic political scandal; the consequences of which are now being felt around the world as Donald Trump gets busy. Biden's cognitive impairment was known to those around him, but his refusal to acknowledge this himself was matched only by the determination of his closest aides to shield him from media scrutiny and from contact with his own cabinet, Democratic senators and members of Congress. As shocking as the book undoubtedly is, it is also forensic, measured and, as a consequence, absolutely damning. To their great credit, Tapper and Thompson allow the facts to speak for themselves. It is perfectly possible to feel the deepest sympathy for Biden's new medical predicament; and to be appalled by the cover-up that took place on his watch. Indeed, it is intellectually and emotionally lazy to confuse the two issues. Now that he is a private citizen, Biden's health is an entirely personal matter; when he was the most powerful person on earth, and intending to remain so until January 20, 2029, it was a matter of the deepest public significance. And that distinction stands, however uncomfortable it may feel to some. 'It was an abomination,' one prominent strategist tells the authors. 'He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.' 'He totally fucked us,' says David Plouffe, the seasoned adviser recruited to turbocharge Kamala Harris's doomed 107-day campaign, of Biden's decision to run again, his disastrous debate with Trump on June 27 and the unforgivable delay of more than three weeks before he stepped aside. At the heart of the story is the so-called 'Politburo' of the president's most trusted aides: Mike Donilon (part of Biden's inner circle since 1981); Steve Ricchetti (who had been one of Biden's chiefs of staff when he was vice-president); Bruce Reed (who had been another); and Ron Klain (chief of staff from January 2021 to February 2023, nicknamed 'the prime minister'). According to one senior source: 'Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board'. The Politburo and the next concentric ring of border guards did everything in their power to insulate Biden from the rapid-fire interaction that is the basis of any successful political leadership. They restricted his hours of work, supplied him with cue cards for everything, and ensured that he read from teleprompters in settings in which a parish councillor, let alone the leader of the free world, should have been able to speak off-the-cuff. Most egregiously, they kept his pollsters away from him – ensuring that he was not exposed to real-time data about public opinion (though he only had to read the press to know what Americans thought about his frailty). With the tacit collusion of Biden's longtime physician Dr Kevin O'Connor, they ensured that he was never subjected to a formal cognitive test in his routine medical check-ups. Still, the deterioration was increasingly and painfully clear. On December 9, 2022, in the Outer Oval, he could not place his national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Kate Bedingfield, his communications director. 'Steve…' he said to the former. 'Steve…' Then, turning to Bedingfield, he called her: 'Press'. When George Clooney, a longtime ally of the president, met him at a fundraiser in Los Angeles on June 15, Biden did not recognise the Hollywood star. As Tapper and Thompson write: 'A man he had known for years. Clooney had expressed concern about Biden's health before – a White House aide had told him a few months before that they were working on getting the president to take longer steps when he walked – but obviously the problem went far beyond his gait. This was much graver. This was the president of the United States?' The Politburo's myth that only their boss could win in 2024 'became almost a theology, a near-religious faith in Biden's ability to rise again. And as with any theology, skepticism was forbidden'. They demanded unquestioning loyalty to the president on the grounds that Trump represented a grave threat to democracy; but, in contradiction, they also claimed that the Republican nominee was headed to jail. As Tapper and Thompson put it: 'It wasn't a straight line of decline; he had good days and bad. But until the last day of his presidency, Joe Biden and those in his innermost circle refused to admit the reality that his energy, cognitive skills, and communication capacity had faltered significantly'. If this was not a conspiracy, then what is? Biden's presidency was in many respects successful. But that did not justify the plot to conceal his rapid decline – a plot that was bound to fail, and did. In February, special counsel Robert Hur delivered his report on Biden's allegedly unauthorised storage of classified documents and, on the basis of his own interview with the president and earlier audio recordings of conversations with his ghost writer Mark Zwonitzer, described him as 'a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory'. He could not remember, for example, when Beau had died, or when he had been vice-president. Hur's entirely legitimate point concerned Biden's state of mind when he retained the files; as well, by implication, his fitness for trial. For this, he was publicly vilified by senior Democrats. Biden himself seethed in a press conference that it wasn't 'any of their damn business' to ask about his son's death, that he 'knew what the hell I'm doing' and that he didn't need the special counsel's 'recommendation'. As if to make Hur's point for him, he then proceeded to confuse the presidents of Mexico and Egypt. There was a price attached to telling the truth. The former special counsel struggled for some months to find work after these denunciations. According to one Democrat donor: 'if you said anything, you got your head chopped off'. Better to sleepwalk towards disaster than to be honest. A handful dared to breach omertà. Dean Phillips, who stood down last year as a congressman for Minnesota, tried courageously to mobilise a serious primary challenge to the president and, in the end, undertook the task himself, knowing he would fail. 'People will talk their way into beliefs,' Phillips would later say of the Biden cult. 'Even OJ believed he didn't do it at the end.' Joe Bidenʼs ʻdisastrousʼ presidential debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Overwhelmingly, however, senior Democrats – whatever their suspicions, whatever fears they had based on troubling encounters with the president – kept silent until the aftermath of the debate. Loyalty? Perhaps. But also selfishness. A presidency is a vast complex of vested interests, rewards and punishments. Most of those in a position to speak up, or even ask questions, kept their counsel until it was too late. What made the cover-up so ludicrous (as well as disgraceful) was that the public was never fooled. In 2020, 34% of voters had thought Biden too old to be president. By 2023, that figure had risen to 71%. In the modern world of smartphones, social media and digital bombardment, the Politburo's hyper-choreographed pageant was always going to be rumbled. There were too many clips of Biden falling, or fumbling his words, or gawping in a state of confusion. What Tapper and Thompson call the 'tendency towards groupthink, inertia and an extreme and wildly counterproductive risk aversion' was utterly unsuited to contemporary political culture. Even before the disclosure of Biden's illness on Sunday, it was being asked: why dredge all this up now that Trump is back in the White House, wrecking the economy, shredding the constitution, turning the republic into a patrimonial kleptocracy, embracing foreign autocracies? Precisely because lies told for so long by Biden and his team played such an important part in the return of MAGA. As Tapper and Thompson put it: '[F]or those who tried to justify the behavior described here because of the threat of a second Trump term, those fears should have shocked them into reality, not away from it'. In his brilliant book Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications (2008), the sociologist Ivan Ermakoff identifies 'the Statement of Silence' as a critical feature in such crises, where 'silence is a public stance, and as such is strategically informative'. The silence around the Biden White House was deafening. Original Sin is not only a fine work of instant history. It is also a parable and a warning to all progressives. Traditionally, the Right's greatest sin has been its sense of collective entitlement – although, in the populist age, that ancestral vice is being supplanted by digitised bigotry, shameless grift and an indifference to due process. The Left's counterpart weakness is the inclination to believe that its moral rectitude justifies all else. Biden might have been physiologically incapable of serving as president at all, much less running for a second term. But he was on the side of the angels. And so it was positively impertinent to question his capacity to do so. Such delusions and magical thinking are a sure way of failing the public. One thinks of Labour's deranged re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader in 2016; of the use of the hashtag #BeKind to silence difficult debates; of safety-first reticence rather than statesmanlike candour; of progressives' misplaced conviction that there is a 'right side of history' – happily aligned with their own ideology – and that the electorate will always come round to their collective wisdom when they have thought it through properly. The old Marxist idea of 'false consciousness' is still doing its corrosive work. Such deception and self-deception come at a terrible cost. Even now, Biden insists that he would have beaten Trump. He said as much in his appearance with his wife on ABC's The View on May 8 – a serious insult, if only by implication, to Harris. Asked about the allegations of cognitive impairment, he replied: 'They are wrong. There's nothing to sustain that'. The audience lapped it up. Some are now casting Tapper and Thompson as the villains of the piece – as though they knew about Biden's diagnosis in advance. But this is not the time to confuse normal sympathy for an ill man with mere sentimentality. The stakes are too high, the dangers to democracy, the rule of law and the global order too grave for any such indulgence. As Plouffe tells Tapper and Thompson: 'never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they're seeing is not true'. On Friday's episode of Pod Save America, Beto O'Rourke, a former presidential contender and one of the best communicators in the Democratic party, nailed the problem. 'It's not just you and me, but our kids and grandkids, and the generations that follow that might have to pay the price for this,' the former Texas congressman said to host Jon Favreau. 'We might very well lose the greatest country that this world has ever known… It deeply and gravely and perhaps – we'll see – irrevocably harmed this country… The time to be polite, and kind, and respectful is over. You know, Democrats, it seems, care far too much about being right, and being polite, than being in power'. Some may feel, in the light of Biden's diagnosis, that such words are too harsh. Yet it is facts, not feelings, that, we should fervently hope, will prolong the former president's life; medical science, not cloying 'thoughts and prayers' on social media. 'Don't say mean truths' is apparently a Biden family motto. And what a lousy motto it is. The truth, however unpalatable, is the basis of every robust democracy; and, often, not least in the mayhem that Biden left behind him, it's all that we have.
The Hill
17-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Leaked audio of Hur interview shines light on Biden mental fitness: What to know
Former President Biden has found his way back into the spotlight more than 100 days after President Trump reclaimed the White House. Audio, obtained by Axios, from Biden's October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur about classified documents found in his private home from his time as vice president was published by the outlet on Saturday. A shorter clip was released late Friday. The five-hour interview comes from Hur's first day of questioning and appears to show Biden struggling. While the Department of Justice released a transcript of the conversation last year, the Biden administration had pushed back on releasing the tapes, citing concerns over potential tampering or ' deepfakes.' Hur ultimately ruled that Biden 'willfully' kept the documents but suggested a jury would find he is 'a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.' No charges were filed. Here's what to know about the leaked audio. Lapses of memory, lack of focus Biden in several points during the interview had to pause mid-sentence while struggling to find the words to say, the audio shows. The tone of the conversation highlighted the former president's difficulty remembering timelines or staying on track. In one instance he struggles to recall the year his son, Beau, died from brain cancer. Biden was asked by the special counsel to describe his private residence and where he kept the classified documents. 'Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don't know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?' he replied but quickly diverted into why he didn't run against Trump in 2016, citing former President Obama's enthusiasm for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Later, he added, 'I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th.' Two of White House aides interjected to remind him it was 2015 when his son died. He then struggles to relay the year Trump defeated Clinton in the election. 'And what's happened in the meantime is that as … Trump gets elected in November of 2017,' Biden continues, which two staffers quickly correct to 2016. He added, '16. 2016. Alright, so — why do I have 2017 here?' The numbers appeared to confuse Biden once again, as he returned to the topic of Beau and his younger son Hunter Biden. 'OK, yeah. And in 2017, Beau had passed and — this is personal — the genesis of the book and the title 'Promise Me, Dad,' was a — I know you're all … close with your sons and daughters, but Beau was like my right arm and Hunt was my left.' After he finished glowing, Hur asked Biden if he wanted to take a break, per the audio. When the transcript was first released in March, the former president pushed back on the notion that he forgot details around Beau's death. Classified documents details Biden also struggled to explain why he kept certain classified documents after leaving the White House in 2017, the audio shows. The documents were discovered at an office he previously used when serving as vice president, igniting a later search of his home. In addition to handwritten notes on national security, authorities collected 90 documents from his property, of which a little more than 50 contained classified markings. During the interview, the former president acknowledged that he may have wanted to keep a document related to foreign policy in Afghanistan 'for posterity's sake.' Biden had initially said he wasn't sure why he kept the document when asked for the purpose. 'I, I, I, I don't know that I knew, but it wouldn't have … it wasn't something I would have stopped to think about,' he responded. 'I don't know if it was going to be the subject of reporting, but I wanted to hang — I guess I wanted to hang onto it just for posterity's sake,' the former president said. 'I mean, this was my position on Afghanistan.' The reversal likely frustrated his attorneys, who then pressed the special counsel to avoid speculatory questioning that could lead to charges, after which Biden quickly added, 'I don't recall intending to keep this memo.' His lawyers then asked for a break. Fully engaged in conversation Despite the memory lapses and needing assistance on certain words and dates, the audio shows that Biden was fully engaged with the special counsel. As Axios pointed out, the then-president made numerous jokes and came off like a 'nostalgic, grandfatherly storyteller.' He dived into several memories about the wood and molding he has in refurbished rooms at his house to the Corvette he drove with comedian Jay Leno. He also explained the influence of Gutenberg's printing press and spoke about former President Nixon's excessive sweating during a famous 1960 debate with former President Kennedy. The interview only became testy when his attorney asserted that prosecutors may be trying to implicate Biden with their questioning. Response so far Trump told reporters early Friday that Attorney General Pam Bondi would be in charge of deciding whether to officially release the tapes. Following Axios's release, the president and his allies have doubled down on their earlier critiques of Biden — from his age to mental fitness to the use of an autopen at the end of his tenure. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced late Friday that his committee will investigate what he called a 'cover up' of Biden's cognitive function. The lawmaker said he intends to speak to several former White House aides as well as the former president's doctor Kevin O'Connor. Trump also blasted Biden on Saturday, calling the interview a 'scandal' and reupping his 2020 election fraud claims. 'Whoever had control of the 'AUTOPEN' is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment,' the president wrote on his Truth Social platform, later calling his predecessor 'a hapless and cognitively impaired Sleepy Joe Biden.' He added, 'THE FIGHT HAS JUST BEGUN!!!' The messaging comes as many Democrats have cast blame on Biden for 2024 election losses, saying he should have withdrawn from presidential race earlier. Two recent books have also highlighted Biden's decline: ' Original Sin ' by Axios's Alex Thompson and CNN's Jake Tapper and ' Fight ' by The Hill's Amie Parnes and NBC's Jonathan Allen. The audio release also comes after the former president broke his silence for the first time since Trump returned to the Oval Office. He recently sat for interviews with BBC and ABC's 'The View,' to the chagrin of many Democrats who have aired frustration with the move.
Axios
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Exclusive: Audio reveals Biden confusing date of son Beau's death
Audio obtained by Axios of former President Biden's October 2023 interviews with special counsel Robert Hur shows Biden struggling to find the right words and dates when recounting the time of his son Beau's death in 2015. At one point he asks, "Was it 2015 he had died?" Why it matters: After Hur's report came out in early 2024, Biden was livid at the suggestion that he had forgotten when his son died: "How in the hell dare he raise that?" In fact, the audio and transcript show that Biden brought up Beau on his own. The exchange became a centerpiece in Hur's 2024 report that concluded a jury likely wouldn't convict Biden of mishandling classified documents because it probably would view him as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Biden spokesperson Kelly Scully said in a statement: "The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public." Read the full transcript of the exchange: Robert Hur: So during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot, or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on? President Biden: Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don't know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area? Hur: Yes, sir. Biden: Remember, in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president. I'm not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she [Hillary Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't, I hadn't, at this point — even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th. Rachel Cotton (Biden White House counsel): 2015. Unidentified male speaker: 2015. Biden: Was it 2015 he had died? Unidentified male spaker: It was May of 2015. Biden: It was 2015. Bob Bauer (Biden's personal attorney): Or I'm not sure the month, sir, but I think that was the year. Marc Krickbaum (deputy special counsel): That ' s right, Mr. President. I … Biden: And what's happened in the meantime is that as — and Trump gets elected in November of 2017? Unidentified male speaker: 2016. Unidentified male speaker: '16. Biden: '16, 2016. Alright, so — why do I have 2017 here? Ed Siskel (Biden White House counsel): That's when you left office, January of 2017. Biden: Yeah, OK. But that's when Trump gets sworn in then, January. Siskel: Right. Bauer: Right, correct. Biden: OK, yeah. And in 2017, Beau had passed and — this is personal — the genesis of the book and the title "Promise Me, Dad," was a — I know you're all … close with your sons and daughters, but Beau was like my right arm and Hunt was my left. These guys were a year and a day apart and they could finish each other's sentences, and Beau I used to go home on the train, and in the period that I was still in the Senate — anyway. There was pressure — not pressure. Beau knew how much I adored him, and I know this sounds — maybe this sounds so everybody knew how close we were. There was not anybody in the world who wondered whether or not — anyway. And so… Hur: Sir, I'm wondering if this is a good time to take a break briefly. Would that be …. Biden: No, I — let me just keep going to get it done.
