I will always contend the biggest scandal of any presidential administration -- including Woodrow Wilson's -- is Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
Now that Biden's term is over, the media has decided it's safe to talk about his obvious dementia and how the White House staff worked around it for four years. One CBS reporter had the nerve to call it the most 'under-reported story' of 2024 (if only she was in a position to cover that story).
The Biden administration cannot be reduced to that one scandal. When the post-mortem on his term is done, there will be many, many other scandals and corruption on top of the ones we already know about.
It's also not just the scandals and corruption, however. It's the face Joe Biden is -- and always has been -- a terrible human being. The media will paint him as grandpa Joe, the affable if slightly dotty, old guy who was just the president between two Trump terms.
But he's not. In fact, one of the most insulting and gross things of his presidency was his use of cancer as a political football. It started in 2020, when Biden promised not only to cure cancer but diabetes and Alzheimer's (oh, the irony).
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One of the more under-reported, yet grossest parts of Biden's presidency was when he promised to cure cancer, claimed he had "started" to "cure cancer" before the 2022 mid-terms, and then said in 2023 he "ended cancer as we know it."
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 30, 2024
He used *cancer* as a political football.
Biden called his plan the 'Cancer Moonshot'.
As a concept, it's a noble cause. According to the CDC, cancer (all types) is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Thanks to the U.S. medical system, cancer survival rates are better here than pretty much anywhere else in the world.
That being said, Biden had no real intention to tackle the issue of cancer. It was -- as Bonchie said above -- a political football and nothing more.
And, as always, the media let him get away with it.
In 2023, Biden claimed his administration 'ended cancer as we know it.' It was an outrageous claim the media dismissed as a gaffe (as always), and one the White House engaged in some '60 Minutes'-level editing of the transcript of Biden's remarks.
Less than a year after those remarks, I told you how Jeff Bolle, a football coach in my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, died because of a shortage of chemotherapy drugs. Bolle was 60 years old. The White House was silent on this story at the time. Kamala Harris did take a victory lap about lowering drug costs the other day, though.
Yet, somehow, this story gets even worse.
Two weeks ago, I told you about Meera Sachdeva, a former doctor from Mississippi. She's a former doctor for a reason. In 2012, Sachdeva was sentenced to 20 years in prison for defrauding Medicare. She did so by diluting chemotherapy drugs she gave to cancer patients. At least two patient families contribute their deaths to treatment received at the clinic. At the time of Sachdeva's conviction, this is what the judge and a U.S. attorney said:
'It's a very small thing to send this woman to jail for the next 20 years when you compare it to the damage she has done,' U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III said in court.
'The health care fraud perpetrated by these defendants was an abuse of public trust motivated by greed,' U.S. attorney Gregory K. Davis said in a statement announcing the original prison sentence for Sachdeva in response to her guilty plea.
'We remain committed to protect the integrity of our health care system and will continue to strictly enforce our federal health care laws.'
Joe Biden granted Sachdeva clemency.
She was halfway through her 20 year sentence, and Joe Biden granted her clemency. After she defrauded Medicare (as part of her sentencing, she was also ordered to repay $8.2 million to Medicare) and likely killed cancer patients, Joe Biden let her off the hook early.
I have cared for many people with cancer. I have watched them fight, suffer, and die from cancer. I know someone who is -- as I write this -- about to lose his beloved wife to cancer. It devastates lives on a daily basis.
And Joe Biden used it for political gain.
Shame on him.