May 19, 2025: Biden’s cancer diagnosis rocks DC

The Playbook Podcast

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🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. This news comes just days before the release of a hotly anticipated book that promises to reveal information about the former president’s alleged cognitive decline and the lengths that White House staffers and others in his inner circle went to conceal it. Also, President Donald Trump has a diplomatic double-header today with calls to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his latest attempt to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine. National politics correspondent and Playbook contributing author Adam Wren joins Playbook managing editor Jack Blanchard to break it all down. Plus, House Republicans voted the Big Beautiful Bill out of the Budget Committee last night, increasing the likelihood of a floor vote before Memorial Day.

Transcript

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0:00.0	presented by BP.
0:08.8	Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard, and I'm Adam Rens, sitting in for Dasha Burns this morning.
0:14.1	And a very good Dasha Burns you make, too, Adam.
0:16.1	It is Monday, May the 19th, and this is the Playbook podcast.
0:20.0	Let's run through what's driving the day.
0:21.7	Three big stories, one of them I'm sure you will already have heard. President Joe Biden
0:25.7	diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. This was announced on Sunday afternoon.
0:30.6	We will be talking about that in a minute. President Donald Trump has some big moments today.
0:35.9	He'll be talking to Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky about the Ukraine war.
0:40.2	We could see big movement on that today.
0:42.2	And big news out of the hill last now.
0:44.3	House Republicans have finally passed the big beautiful bill through the Budget Committee.
0:49.3	It still has to go to the Rules Committee this week.
0:51.9	There still has to be a big floor vote this week.
0:53.9	But we are one little bit closer
0:55.8	towards that bill actually passing.
1:00.7	Adam, lots of news this morning, but what we really need to dive into are two big things,
1:05.0	Biden's diagnosis and Trump's discussions with Putin and Zelensky.
1:09.0	Let's kick off with the tragic news about Joe Biden.
1:13.1	The statement dropped just before 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon from his office. What do we know so far
1:20.9	about his condition? Yeah, so we know that it's a stage four cancer. We had heard earlier that he had
1:27.3	a nodule that was discovered last week. We're told that this latest diagnosis came Friday, which, if you'll recall, Friday, the audio of the interview that former President Joe Biden did with a special prosecutor last year at drop that leak, presumably from somebody in the
	...

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