Joe Biden has made a surprising admission about his eldest son, Beau Biden, and the 2020 election when he beat Donald Trump to the White House.
Beau, the former Attorney General of Delaware, died aged 46 in 2015 from brain cancer.
The former president’s son served in the US military and spent a year in Iraq between 2008 and 2009, before moving into politics.
Beau died in May 2015, less than two years after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive type of primary brain cancer.
Speaking at a gala held in Omaha by the Nebraska Democratic party, Biden admitted it should have been his late son elected as president in 2020 instead of himself.
The former president said: “Folks, I know what cancer research means. 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.”
Joe and Beau Biden pictured together in 2008 (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden then touched on his own health, after being with an ‘aggressive’ form of prostate cancer earlier this year.
“But when you get that research, research, they’re, they’re doing, when they diagnose it – in my case, I just had prostate cancer – so, and, I, uh, when you finish that round of treatment, you get to ring that bell at the end of each treatment,” the former president said as per CNN.
“I thank God for the doctors and the nurses and the incredible breakthroughs we’re making in cancer research.
“Now Trump and his Republican friends are cutting government funding for health care and making it more expensive, more expensive for virtually everyone.”
Joe Biden hit out at the Trump administration in the same speech (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Elsewhere in his speech held at the Nebraska Democratic party, Biden slammed Donald Trump after the president demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom.
“I knew Trump was going to taking a wrecking ball to the country, but I had no idea, I have to admit, I didn’t know there was going to be an actual wrecking ball,” the 46th POTUS said.
“It’s a perfect symbol of his presidency. Trump has taken a wrecking ball not only to the people’s house but to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to our very democracy.”
