An intimate family exchange between Hunter Biden and his father, former President Joe Biden, has stirred new conversations about the elder Biden’s health and political future.
According to the Daily Mail, Hunter Biden, 55, urged his father to rest and avoid pushing himself during a hectic visit to Ireland in April 2023—a full year before the former president announced his bid for reelection.
A newly released book, “Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, reveals that Hunter, a recovering addict and convicted felon, told the former president: “You promised you’d take a nap. You know you can’t handle all this,” as party officials witnessed Joe Biden’s exhaustion on the foreign trip.
Joe Biden’s schedule in Ireland was loaded with tree-planting, ceremonies, and meetings that left him visibly tired, according to multiple lawmakers. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and then-Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) witnessed Hunter Biden privately counseling his father to step back from the relentless event program.
Rather than following his son’s advice, the former president reportedly walked to the bar to fetch himself a soda. Lawmakers noted Joe Biden’s worn-out appearance. Rep. Quigley told authors Tapper and Thompson that seeing Biden reminded him of his own late father’s struggles with Parkinson’s disease, saying the former president would “perk up for crowds but look deflated when alone.”
The lawmakers told the authors that they grew anxious watching the scene and openly questioned, even then, whether Biden could endure another campaign or term in office.
Concerns within the Democratic Party about former President Biden’s health have been simmering for some time. In fact, days before Biden’s cancer announcement, Democrats appeared on Sunday news shows voicing doubts about his decision to run for president again. The party, for years, had publicly insisted that he was fit for office, downplaying any hints of decline.
Republicans, meanwhile, have long argued the former president’s age was an issue, pointing to repeated falls and episodes of unclear speech. White House staff publicly countered such claims by describing Biden as more energetic than people decades younger and insisted that warnings about his cognitive health were politically motivated attacks.
Recently, former President Biden appeared with his wife, the previous First Lady Jill Biden, on “The View” and pushed back on renewed questions, saying, “They are wrong. There's nothing to sustain that.”
Despite public denials, the new book reports that those close to Joe Biden have harbored concerns behind the scenes. According to Tapper and Thompson, aides debated how to handle the possibility that the former president might require a wheelchair and how to conceal such a development until after the 2024 election.
In private, as the book claims, Biden was sometimes “breathless, soft and weak,” especially away from crowds, but appeared more animated when performing for an audience. Hunter Biden’s request that his father rest, voiced during the Ireland trip, became a symbol of the family’s behind-the-scenes worries, standing in contrast to the White House’s consistent public message.
The urgency around the issue of Biden’s health heightened after his office announced Sunday that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. The development drew sympathy from both Republicans and Democrats and reignited a debate about Biden’s capacity for political life.
Biden followed the announcement with a smiling photo of himself, Jill Biden, and their cat, Willow, posted to social media. Despite the positive image, the underlying health crisis and Hunter Biden’s concerns cast a long shadow over the former president’s future in public service.
During the April 2023 trip to Ireland, former President Joe Biden’s apparent frailty and the intervention from his son Hunter left several lawmakers worried and triggered conversations about his fitness for leadership. Legislators described seeing symptoms reminiscent of serious neurological conditions and questioned Biden’s ability to undertake another presidential campaign.
Now, following Biden’s disclosure of his advanced prostate cancer, scrutiny over his health and potential influence on the Democratic Party has only grown as those closest to him continue to grapple with the realities that were visible long before the diagnosis was made public.
