Joe Biden’s White House physician is facing increasing pressure to testify under oath after declaring the President healthy just months prior to a late-stage prostate cancer diagnosis.
Biden’s announcement on Sunday about fighting a severe type of cancer that has spread to his bones prompted bipartisan expressions of support and well wishes.
But just 24 hours later, the knives were out within MAGA circles as cynics demand answers about the former president’s health.
Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s long-time physician, consistently assured the American public during his presidency that Biden was in good health and capable of serving an additional four years.
Experts, however, have questioned why Biden’s prostate cancer was not picked up earlier given the late stage prognosis. The discrepancy has sparked theories that Jill Biden, O’Connor and other political allies may have covered up the diagnosis.
Trump on Monday explicitly said ‘somebody is going to have to speak to his doctor… I think the doctor said he was just fine.’
He added: ‘It takes a long time to get to that situation… I’m surprised that it wasn’t, you know, the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage nine, that’s a long time.’
Now, MAGA loyalists led by Jesse Watters have set their sights on O’Connor, demanding he be subpoenaed and forced to answer questions on the public record about Biden’s health.
‘He needs to be brought in, he needs to be subpoenaed, and he needs to answer some of these questions,’ Watters said.
‘Who knows if he even got tested. He was supposed to have had a full test a year ago, and they said there was no cancer detected. Well, we need to know exactly what tests they did.’
Officially, Biden maintains that he sought further testing last week after noticing a small nodule on his prostate.
Biden’s illness is rated 9 on the prostate cancer ‘Gleason scale’, which means it is extremely aggressive, and at stage 4 (there is no stage 5 with this cancer) in general medical terms.
Critics have pointed out that O’Connor has had unprecedented access to Biden and his medical records as his physician, and therefore was responsible for picking up on the cancer as it spread through the 82-year-old president’s body.
‘This guy was brought in from Delaware, and he was in business with the Biden family, and this was the oldest president in American history, probably the sickest sitting president of this century, and he never gave a press conference,’ Watters said.
On X, Republican representatives are being inundated with messages from MAGA supporters demanding they support and progress the subpoena request made by Watters.
Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, who has amassed 3.7million followers on the social media platform, wrote: ‘Subpoena him. Ask if he ever did a cancer screening.
‘When he pleads the 5th — that’s all you need to know.’
Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham are among high profile politicians now facing pressure from the public to take action against O’Connor.
‘I will be calling both your offices shortly, to request that you subpoena Dr. Kevin O’Connor immediately. Prostate Cancer does not metastasize in months – it takes years,’ one MAGA supporter said in an X post addressing Graham.
Another wrote: ‘It’s a great day to call your congressman and demand that they subpoena White House doctor Kevin O’Connor for facilitating the greatest cover-up in American history.’
Trump’s original White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, now a MAGA-aligned Republican representing Texas in Congress, also addressed the mounting concerns about O’Connor’s role in the saga.
‘Care at the White House should be second to none. Unbelievable this was missed.
‘The truth is, his physician was more concerned about assisting with the political cover-up than providing world-class medical care.’
Biden’s relationship with O’Connor dates back more than a decade, and he was reportedly closely involved with Biden’s son Beau as he battled, and ultimately succumbed to, brain cancer from 2013 to 2015.
In February 2024, when Biden was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, O’Connor insisted he was ‘fit to serve’ following a routine physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
He first addressed Biden’s health in 2019, when he first went head-to-head with Trump. At the time, O’Connor described Biden as ‘a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.’
By 2021, he once again lauded Biden as a ‘healthy, vigorous 78-year-old man,’ who is ‘fit for duty’ and ‘fully executes all of his responsibilities without exemptions or accommodations.’
He utilized similar language again in 2023, when he described Biden after his latest physical as ‘ a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.’
Now, O’Connor’s full medical asessements of Biden have been brought into disrepute.
A string of medical experts lined up to express profound skepticism at team Biden’s version of events.
They insist that the highly experienced doctors attending to a US president, who was subject to a rigorous annual health check, of such advanced years would never have missed such a serious cancer.
Several said they were convinced that Biden must have been ill with the disease – which typically takes longer to progress than other cancers – for years, and that he, his doctors and perhaps his closest family and aides therefore must have known about it.
Dr Zeke Emanuel, a senior oncologist who was a member of Biden’s Covid advisory board, said he was sure Biden ‘did not develop [prostate cancer] in the last, 100, 200 days’, adding: ‘He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021… I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that…
‘He’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading.’
New York urologist and prostate-cancer specialist Dr David Shusterman said patients with Biden’s advanced condition who came to see him typically ‘hadn’t had medical attention in ten years [and] presented to an emergency room with bone pain.’
He added: ‘The fact that we just find it at a Gleason 9 is pretty much unheard of in this day and age.’
Fellow cancer expert Dr Stephen Quay was also dubious of the Biden camp’s explanation, saying it would constitute medical ‘malpractice’ for Biden’s doctors to have failed to test a serving or former US president periodically for signs of prostate cancer.
Donald Trump Jr. shared Dr. Quay’s comments and questioned ‘How Dr. Jill Biden [missed] stage five metastatic cancer, or is this yet another coverup??’
Initially upon hearing the news, Trump Jr. took to his Instagram story to wish the former president ‘a speedy recovery.’
But as night fell, he seemed to question how long Biden may have had the disease.
TikTokker JD Sharp replied to Trump Jr.’s post by claiming the announcement of Biden’s diagnosis on Sunday ‘is an effort to push the fact that Biden was running the country as a vegetable under the rug.’
‘Without question,’ he wrote back.
Biden has battled cancer before.
In 1988, the former president had two brain aneurysms that threatened to end his political career.
He also had a lesion removed from his chest in February 2023, and prior to entering office he had several non-melanoma skin cancer spots removed with Mohs surgery.
Just as he has before, Biden’s office on Sunday vowed to ‘review treatment options with his physicians.
‘While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,’ the statement read.
