Former president Joe Biden was wearing a seemingly fresh bandage on his head during an appearance at a Democratic Party event on Friday where he gave a passionate speech about his and his late son, Beau’s, battles with cancer.
Biden, 82, spoke at the Nebraska Democratic Party’s Ben Nelson Gala. There, he said his son should have been president instead of him and lambasted President Donald Trump’s administration ‘cutting government funding for cancer research.’
‘Cancer hits every family. It’s hit my family hard,’ the former president said.
‘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.’
It was announced that Biden was diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer in May, and the former president previously appeared in public with a large bandage on his head in August after receiving Mohs surgery, a procedure to detect how deep skin cancer has spread.
The 46th president went on to speak about his experience with cancer treatment and the importance of researching the disease.
He said: ‘When you get that research they’re doing, when they diagnose it – in my case, I just had prostate cancer – when you finish that round of treatment, you get to ring that bell at the end of each treatment.
‘Well, thank God for the doctors and nurses and incredible breakthroughs we’re making in cancer research. Now, Trump and his Republican friends are cutting government funding for health care, making it more expensive.’
Biden did not explicitly mention the bandage on the top left of his scalp, and it is unclear exactly why he was wearing it.
He continued his speech with further critiques of the Trump administration.
‘Why in God’s name are they doing this?’ he said before answering his own question by stating Republicans are looking to fund tax cuts for the ‘wealthiest people in America.’
The former president got particularly emotive when discussing the record-long government shutdown, which is on its 39th day, four days longer than the previous shutdown record that took place during Trump’s first term.
Biden said the current president ‘better get the damn government open’ and accused Trump of ‘deliberately making hunger worse for Americans,’ in reference to the lack of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
‘In the United States of America, one in five children, one in five children, go to bed hungry every night!’ he said.
Republicans have blamed Democrats for keeping the government closed, because almost every Republican senator has voted in favor of the proposed spending plan.
Democrats have said they refuse to pass the bill until they can secure funding for healthcare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.
In the meantime, important public services such as air traffic control have suffered heavily. Up to one in five flights could be canceled next week if the shutdown drags on, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
During his speech on Friday, Biden also mentioned the stunning sweep of his party across state elections last week, which saw Democratic wins in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Mississippi.
The former president said those results showed voters were ‘sending a message to Trump and to his crowd.’
Biden said poignantly: ‘The Democratic Party is back – not hyperbole.’
