Former U.S. President Joe Biden said in a PEOPLE interview that he would not have continued his 2024 reelection campaign if he had known at the time that cancer was causing him to feel unwell. He also said he would have resigned from office, according to the interview published Nov. 11 and a separate Associated Press report on his remarks.

What Biden said about his 2024 decision

The interview was conducted at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Nov. 5, PEOPLE reported. Reflecting on the campaign, Biden said he did not know he had cancer while president and described the June 2024 debate with Donald Trump as not decisive, despite the scrutiny it drew over his age and performance.

Biden ended his reelection bid in July 2024 and endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee. He was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in 2025, months after leaving office, the Associated Press reported. His comments are a retrospective account of what he says he would have done if he had known about the diagnosis; they do not establish what officials knew at the time.

A campaign timeline, viewed in hindsight

The remarks connect two major moments in the final stretch of Biden’s presidency: his decision to stay in the race after the June debate and his withdrawal weeks later. The interview does not change the timeline, but adds his own explanation of how a cancer diagnosis, had he known about it, would have affected that choice.

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Sources

PEOPLE interview republished by Yahoo (original reporting by Nick Maslow for PEOPLE); Associated Press report by Bill Barrow.