An official White House transcript appears to differ with President Joe Biden’s Tuesday remark that his administration had “ended cancer as we know it.”
On a video recording of President Biden’s remarks, he appears to say “I said ‘I’d cure cancer.’ And they looked at me like, ‘Why cancer?’ Because no one thinks we can. That’s why. And we can. We ended cancer as we know it.”
The official White House transcript of Biden’s remarks, however, states that the president said “We can end cancer as we know it.”
In February of 2022, the Biden-Harris administration announced an ambitious goal of reducing the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years — part of Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, a program initially launched by President Obama in 2016.
Biden has made ending cancer a key issue in his political career — after leaving office in 2017 he launched the “Biden Cancer Initiative” nonprofit organization alongside his wife, Dr. Jill Biden in order to “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes.”
In 2020, the Washington Free Beacon reported that in its two years of operation, the Biden Cancer Initiative raised and spent $4.8 million.
Tax forms revealed that in 2017 and 2018 nearly two-thirds of the money spent by Biden’s nonprofit, slightly more than $3 million, was directed to employee salaries, compensation, and benefits.
The remaining $1.7 million was spent on conferences, conventions, and meetings — during its two-year run Biden’s nonprofit did not provide grants to any other group or foundation, while its president, Greg Simon, brought in a salary of $224,539 in 2017 and $429,750 in 2018.
Appearing to claim that his administration had ended cancer was not Biden’s only slipup Tuesday.
Biden also made the claim that “over 100 people” died during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“And there’s still—we’re still feeling the profound loss of the pandemic. As I mentioned, we have over 100 people dead. That’s 100 empty chairs around the kitchen table,” Biden said.
Here’s how White House officials corrected Biden’s statement in their transcript of his remarks:
