On Wednesday, President Biden said that he currently has cancer, forcing the White House to quickly claim that he was referring to skin cancer he had before becoming president.
Biden made the comment during a speech on climate change in Somerset, Massachusetts, as he discussed his childhood and pollution growing up in Delaware.
“Five years ago, this towering power plant that once stood with cooling towers 500 feet high closed down,” Biden said. “The coal plant at Brayton Point was the largest of its kind in New England. 1,500 megawatts of power, enough to power one in five Massachusetts homes and businesses.”
“For over 50 years, this plant supported this region’s economy through their electrici- — the electricity they supplied, the good jobs they provided, and the local taxes they paid,” Biden continued. “But the plant, like many others around the country, had another legacy: one of toxins, smog, greenhouse gas emissions, the kind of pollution that contributed to the climate emergency we now face today.”
Biden said that Gina McCarthy, a former regulator in Massachusetts, told him that people “used to get a rag out and wipe the gunk off of their car’s windshield in the morning just to be able to drive.”
Biden said the story was “not very much unlike where I grew up in place called Claymont, Delaware, which has more oil refineries that Houston, Texas…”
“I just lived up the road in an apartment complex when we moved to Delaware, and just up the road a little school I went to, Holy Rosary grade school, and because it was a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove us and rather than us be able to walk,” Biden said. “And guess what? The first frost, you know what was happening, you’d have to put on your windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window.”
“That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up [with] have cancer, and I why can’t for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Biden continued.
NEW – Biden says, "I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer" because of oil pollution in his home state Delaware.pic.twitter.com/Zbaj4BWTkK
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 20, 2022
The White House later addressed the remarks, saying that Biden “was referring to past removal of skin cancer in his remarks from Massachusetts. Biden mistakenly stated (present tense) that he has cancer,” according to Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich.
Update: WH official tells me POTUS was referring to past removal of skin cancer in his remarks from Massachusetts.
Biden mistakenly stated (present tense) that he has cancer.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) July 20, 2022
