Darkness had fallen in Delaware and the dire news had been delivered.
Joe and Jill Biden sat on the sofa on Sunday night, their green-eyed, grey-coated cat Willow on Jill’s lap, and they took a selfie for the nation.
The former president smiled widely. His wife looked more forlorn.
‘Cancer touches us all,’ he captioned the post. ‘Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.’
Two days on from that photo, the couple is likely feeling significantly less grateful.
The initial shock and sadness over the announcement of 82-year-old Joe Biden’s advanced prostate cancer has subsided and been replaced with rancor.
Even those normally supportive of the Bidens, like major Democrat-backers and media allies, are asking who knew what about the president’s health crisis and when, with some pointing an accusatory finger at Dr Jill.
Joe and Jill Biden sat on the sofa on Sunday night (above), their green-eyed, grey-coated cat Willow on Jill’s lap and they took a selfie for the nation.
But even those normally supportive of the Bidens, like major Democrat-backers and media allies, are asking who knew what about the president’s health crisis and when, with some pointing an accusatory finger at Dr Jill.
Now, Biden insiders exclusively tell the Daily Mail that the president has retreated to familiar surroundings in Wilmington, where he’ll be embraced by the community and shielded by a fiercely watchful wife.
‘To understand the Bidens you have to go to Wilmington. It’s a small community, it’s protective of them,’ a source with knowledge of the family told the Daily Mail.
‘They have their routine, the coffee shop they go to, the church by the river where they go to mass, you see them at the grocery store,’ they said. ‘They’ll hunker down there. And if anything, the backlash against Joe is only going to make Jill more protective of him.’
Indeed, many close to the Bidens have refused to respond to the Daily Mail’s requests for comment on the president’s condition. But on Tuesday, a spokesman released a few new details, claiming that prior to last week Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer and he was last screened for the disease (by routine blood test) in 2014, when he was 72.
Whether this additional information quiets critics or encourages more questions – like why a president of the United States would have opted to stop testing for prostate cancer – remains to be seen. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the woman who has been at Biden’s side for decades is now the chief target of critics.
‘Elder Abuse! Criminal Charges??’ Leo Terrell, a senior counsel to the DOJ’s Civil Rights office, posted on social media. ‘She knew about President Biden’s health problems. But still wanted him to run for President. Evil,’ he claimed.
‘This is not the graceful exit they dreamed of,’ Johanna Maska, a White House aide who worked closely with Biden when he served as vice president, told the Daily Mail.
The criticism, she said, stings.
‘I know they are sensitive to it. And Joe will be following it all – I don’t think there’s ever been a moment when he didn’t watch the news. He’s a product of DC. He cares very much about what’s going on,’ Maska said.
‘To understand the Bidens you have to go to Wilmington. It’s a small community, it’s protective of them,’ a source with knowledge of the family told the Daily Mail. (Pictured: Biden’s Wilmington home)
Those who know the Bidens well have also told the Daily Mail that the famously close-knit family is rallying round, trying their best to weather the storm together. But it hurts them, too.
Joe and Jill are being supported by his younger sister Valerie Biden Owens, who has been his close political and personal advisor since he successfully ran for the Senate in 1972. Valerie, 79, has been described as her brother’s ‘gut check’: he, in turn, calls her his best friend.
The couple’s daughter Ashley, a 43-year-old Delaware-based social worker, and son Hunter, the 55-year-old artist and recovering addict, are also frequent visitors to the Wilmington home where Joe and Jill are now holed up, weighing his medical options.
Maska reveals that the Bidens will also be leaning on their long-term confidantes – chief among them Mike Donilon, a top Biden confident since 1981, and Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state. Anthony Bernal, Jill’s right-hand man during her White House years, remains key.
‘They still have the same circle around them,’ said Maska. ‘They are 100 percent loyalists, whether they are on the payroll or not.’
However, Maska added that she is concerned about the advice that Biden has received.
‘The Biden top advisors worked to get to what Biden wanted,’ she said. ‘And that’s very different with the Obama orbit. It was expected with Obama that you’d provide your direct advice, even when it was in conflict with the boss.’
Since Sunday’s cancer announcement broke, one of the first truly cutting punches came from CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, who suggested that the news amounted to a ploy to distract from the release of both a new book – Original Sin, that claims to expose a White House ‘cover-up’ of Biden’s cognitive decline – and leaked audio excerpts of Biden’s October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur.
Hur was investigating Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified information – and the tapes, released on Friday, revealed Biden to be doddering and plagued by memory lapses and confusion throughout the ordeal.
Biden insiders exclusively tell the Daily Mail that the president has retreated to familiar surroundings in Wilmington, where he’ll be embraced by the community and shielded by a fiercely watchful wife.
The couple’s daughter Ashley (pictured), a 43-year-old Delaware-based social worker, and son Hunter, the 55-year-old artist and recovering addict, are also frequent visitors to the Wilmington home where Joe and Jill are now holed up.
‘The Biden family always supported their network when there was a cancer diagnosis, whatever happened. I’m quite confident that’s what the Biden family wants right now,’ a former aide said.
‘The timing is just extraordinary,’ said Stelter.
Then on Monday morning, former Biden medical advisor and renowned oncologist Dr Ezekiel Emanuel said he believes Biden likely had cancer at the very beginning of his presidency, in 2021, and perhaps even earlier.
‘I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that,’ Emanuel told a shocked-looking Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. ‘He’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading.’
While Hunter is yet to publicly address the diagnosis, Ashley Biden posted a photo of her father on Instagram, writing: ‘The strongest fighter I know: The best fighter there ever was. I will be by his side through it all. Like he has been in mine every single day of my life.’
For her part, the Bidens’ granddaughter Naomi, 31, called Original Sin ‘uninspired lies’ and accused its authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of peddling ‘political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class.’
And Maska, the former Obama White House staffer, said that the Bidens will at least draw strength from the network of those they’ve helped with their own cancer diagnoses.
‘I remember when my Obama colleague Brandon Lepow was diagnosed with aggressive cancer, Joe Biden called him offering both his support and advocacy,’ Maska said. Lepow died from leukemia in October 2015, aged 32.
‘The Biden family always supported their network when there was a cancer diagnosis, whatever happened. I’m quite confident that’s what the Biden family wants right now.’
The Bidens will suerly find solace in Wilmington, at the home Joe built for his family in 1998.
It’s within these walls that they mourned the brain cancer death of their son Beau in 2015, and licked their wounds in 2017, after a bitter Biden left the White House at the end of Obama’s term, having been pressured to step aside and allow Hillary Clinton to run against Trump.
Now they return here again – facing another uncertain future.
