Former US President Joe Biden, appearing with a fresh-looking bandage on his head, told Nebraska Democrats on Friday that his late son, Beau Biden, should have been elected commander-in-chief in 2020 instead of him.
Speaking at the Nebraska Democratic Party’s Ben Nelson Gala, Biden remembered Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and criticised President Donald Trump. He accused him of cutting federal funding for cancer research after previously declaring it a priority.
“Folks, I know what cancer research means,” Biden said. “Cancer hits every family. It’s hit my family hard.”
“When the love of my life, my oldest son, the attorney general of the state of Delaware, who should’ve been the president, not me, volunteered to go to Iraq for a year, didn’t have to, he came back with stage four glioblastoma because he lived in a burn pit just like those guys did on 9/11, and he died,” Biden said, as reported by the New York Post.
It was Biden’s second public appearance in the past week, and his second since completing a round of radiation therapy in October for an aggressive form of prostate cancer diagnosed after he left office.
Although he made no mention of his health, when he spoke about cancer, it was not about himself but about his late son, Beau, who died in 2015.
Friday’s event also marked Biden’s first purely political appearance since Labor Day 2024, when he joined Vice President Kamala Harris at a labour rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, two months before the November 5, 2024, election.
Biden urges political comeback
Biden called for a political comeback, though not for himself, but to an audience hungry for a fight.
“You know what it feels like to be outnumbered,” he told Democrats in Nebraska, where Republicans have carried the state in every presidential election since 1968. “But every election, you put up the yard signs and you make your voices heard. The country needs you badly.”
It was the kind of pep talk that sells in a place where Democrats lose statewide but have staged winning races for the Omaha area’s 2nd District electoral vote, elected a Democratic mayor for the first time since 2009 and feel energized about capturing the 2nd District seat in 2026.
Biden heaped on the encouragement, but returned repeatedly to his view of his lone term’s high points, curbing COVID-19 and beginning the economic recovery from the epidemic.
He didn’t touch the difficulties he had last year, nor the year of debate Democrats have engaged in over how they lost the presidency to Republican Donald Trump.
In the summer of 2024, Biden waited more than three weeks after his disastrous June debate with Donald Trump, a delay that fueled panic among Democrats, before announcing in July that he would not seek another term. He went on to endorse then–Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor on the Democratic ticket.
In a book published in September, Harris wrote that she and others within Biden’s inner circle should have been more forceful in urging him to consider stepping aside earlier, AP reported.
During his speech on Friday, the closest Biden came to acknowledging the difficulty of that decision was through an oblique joke.
“I have the dubious distinction. I’m the youngest ever man elected to the U.S. Senate and I’m the oldest damn president,” he playfully rued.
(With inputs from agencies)
