James Morrow: Cover-up for political gain? A question begging for answers

Everyone wishes Joe Biden well in his cancer battle, but sympathy shouldn’t stop investigations into what the hell was going on in the White House over four years and whether decisions made in that time were even legal or constitutional.

Surely there is no way Joe Biden and his handlers would have covered up a cancer diagnosis for political gain, right?

Under ordinary circumstances the question would seem too bizarre if not downright offensive to ask.

Yet in the middle of a US media cycle that has seen the former president’s mental fitness for office suddenly being discussed more openly than it ever was when he was in power, it is now a question begging to be asked.

Here in the US, the past ten days have been devastating for Biden’s reputation, to say nothing for the reputation of large segments of the US media who have been revealed as unindicted co-conspirators in an effort to hide how bad things really were.

First came news that CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who was once dismissive of claims that Biden’s mental faculties were failing, was to publish a book detailing what he now calls “a concerted effort by Biden’s inner circle to hide the extent of his cognitive and physical decline from voters.”

US former President Joe Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden arrive for late Pope Francis' funeral ceremony. Picture Isabella Bonotto/ AFP

Then, audio recordings of Biden’s 2023 interviews with the special counsel assigned to look into the former president’s mishandling of classified documents were released.

While they reveal Biden and his lawyers cannily avoiding traps set by prosecutors who would have had an ordinary citizen dead to rights, they also show the former president stumbling, slurring, zoning out, and forgetting key dates including when his son Beau died.

So much for claims by the White House and sympathetic media that Biden was “sharp as a tack”, far more vigorous than his much younger staffers, and at least behind closed doors a charming wit and ruthless negotiator.

All this has not just been brutal for Biden’s reputation and the reputations of those who covered for him, claiming he was “sharp as a tack” when president and more vigorous than his young staffers.

The revelations also raise real questions such as: Who was actually running the country?

Who had oversight of foreign policy and US intelligence agencies when Hamas attacked Israel and Russia started a war in Europe?

And who was really responsible for pushing all those pre-emptive pardons through at the end of Biden’s term?

No wonder more than a few on the right including Donald Trump Jr are asking whether something fishy is going on, and whether the diagnosis was held back for a rainy day to shut down precisely these sorts of questions.

Because, right on cue, Biden surrogates have come out in force to use the diagnosis as a fire blanket to smother these discussions.

Democrat strategist David Axelrod said debates about Biden’s fitness “should be muted,” while CNN’s Brian Stelter said they should be “paused.”

Biden surrogates have come out in force to use the diagnosis as a fire blanket to smother these discussions.

On the American ABC’s left wing, female dominated chat show The View’s Whoopi Goldberg urged people to “put politics aside,” admitting the news is fueling cover-up claims.

Even the nature of the diagnosis, advanced prostate cancer that has spread to the bone, raises eyebrows.

Yes, prostate cancer is serious business. But as cancers go, it is generally slow moving.

Commentators have leapt on the fact that Mr Biden’s health screens from 2023 and 2024 when he was still in the White House made no mention of prostate screening, implying a sin of omission.

Whoopi Goldberg urged people to “put politics aside,” admitting the news is fueling cover-up claims.

Oncologist Dr Zeke Emanuel who sat on Biden’s Covid advisory board, told American TV, “he probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. I don’t think there’s any disagreement on that.”

Though, to be fair, medical experts are not of one voice.

One Sydney surgeon told this column that despite many prostate cancers being managed for years it was still possible that an “aggressive cancer (such as Biden’s) could be very fast growing and could indeed have come about this year.”

There are other questions being raised, too.

Who had oversight of foreign policy and US intelligence agencies when Hamas attacked Israel and Russia started a war in Europe?

Like, was Biden just offering up another word salad in 2022 when in a just resurfaced clip he suggested he had cancer at the time? Or was he hiding a scarier truth?

Speaking in Delaware about the oil refineries near where he grew up, Biden said at the time: “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

To think clearly about what is happening here, it is necessary to do two things simultaneously.

One, everyone of good will should indeed wish the former president well and offer all best wishes to him and his family for the difficult road ahead.

But, at the same time, none of this sympathy should stop investigations into just what the hell was going on in the White House these past four years and whether decisions made during that time were even legal or constitutional.