Former President Joe Biden has maintained a relatively low public profile since leaving the White House in January 2025. Now his son Hunter has offered a sobering description of what the former president is dealing with privately.
During an interview with the BBC, Hunter Biden became visibly emotional while discussing his father’s cancer and said the disease has metastasized beyond his bones.
“It’s really tough, Paddy,” Hunter told BBC Newsnight host Paddy O’Connell.
Hunter paused as he struggled to continue.
“My dad is, and to this day remains, the center of our family,” he said. “Not just because of who he is as the public person, but completely because of who he is to each one of us, down to his grandchildren and his great-grandchild.”
Whatever Americans think of the Biden family’s politics, this portion of the interview wasn’t primarily political. It was a son describing his father’s deteriorating health.
“He is our rock,” Hunter said, calling Biden “the best father, the best husband, the best grandfather” he had known.
Then came the most significant disclosure.
“I wish he would complain more because it’s not good,” Hunter said. “The cancer has spread. It’s metastasized into his bones and further.”
He described the disease as “very painful” and “very debilitating in many respects.”
Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis was publicly disclosed in 2025, with his office announcing at the time that the disease had metastasized to his bones. Hunter’s statement that it has spread “further” now suggests additional progression, although he did not specify where else the cancer has been detected.
Hunter nevertheless said his father remains active.
“He’s still out there. He’s still doing this thing,” he said. “That is, he so believes in this country, and as long as he’s alive, I promise you he’s going to continue to fight.”
The former president’s health was only one subject in a wide-ranging interview that also returned to one of the most controversial decisions of Biden’s presidency: his pardon of Hunter.
Joe Biden repeatedly said while president that he would not pardon his son, who had been convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to federal tax offenses.
Then, in December 2024, Biden did exactly that, issuing Hunter an extraordinarily broad pardon covering federal offenses he “committed or may have committed” during a period stretching from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.
O’Connell asked Hunter directly whether his father had gone too far.
Hunter said he had never discussed receiving a pardon with his father before it happened and acknowledged just how fortunate he was to receive one.
But then he made an admission considerably less defensive than Americans normally hear when politicians discuss presidential pardons.
“Was it good for our Constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad’s legacy?” Hunter asked.
“No. On all counts, it was not.”
He wasn’t finished.
“It’s something that is easily criticized and for good reason,” Hunter said. “And I can’t pretend otherwise.”
That’s a remarkable assessment coming from the person who benefited from the pardon.
Hunter also said he remains “eternally grateful” to his father for granting it. The two positions aren’t necessarily contradictory: He can be personally relieved that the pardon protected him while acknowledging that the former president’s decision created legitimate constitutional and political objections.
The admission also cuts through years of partisan argument surrounding the Biden family.
Republicans don’t need to explain why Biden’s pardon of his own son deserves criticism when Hunter himself is now saying it wasn’t good for the Constitution, wasn’t good for the country and wasn’t good for his father’s legacy.
Yet that political confession came during an interview containing a much more personal revelation.
Joe Biden is 83 years old and battling metastatic cancer. According to his son, that cancer has now spread beyond what was previously publicly disclosed and is causing substantial pain.
For all the political battles that have surrounded the Biden family, Hunter’s description of his father’s condition was considerably simpler.
“It’s really hard,” he said.
And this time, there was nothing partisan about the reason why.
