Representative Ronny Jackson, the former top White House physician, called Joe Biden a “cancer” on Sunday, after it was reported that the president had a cancerous lesion removed from his chest during a February physical.
“Biden is the cancer,” Mr Jackson, a Texas Republican, said on Fox News. “He’s what needs to be removed, not the lesion they found. This is just another effort from his physician, his medical team to distract.”
On Friday, Mr Biden’s doctor, Dr Kevin O’Connor, announced a cancerous legion had been removed from the president’s test in February, but that Mr Biden is healing well and not at risk.
“The site of the biopsy has healed nicely, and the president will continue dermatologic surveillance as part of his ongoing comprehensive health care,” Dr O’Connor wrote in a memo to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the New York Times reports.
A biopsy of the legion showed it contained basal cell carcinoma, a common and unaggressive form of skin cancer, according to the memo. Doctors scraped the area and used electric current to remove the tissue from Mr Biden.
Following the president’s physical last month at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Dr O’Connor found Mr Biden “fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.”
Rep Jackson served in both the Trump and Obama administrations as a White House physician, and likely would’ve come into close contact with Mr Biden.
However, since being elected in 2020 as a GOP congressman for Texas, Dr Jackson has repeatedly attacked Mr Biden and questioned his mental and physical fitness for office, including repeated calls for Mr Biden to undergo mental testing.
The attacks reportedly earned Mr Jackson an angry email from Barack Obama, according to the doctor’s memoir Holding the Line.
The former president wrote that he always spoke “highly” of the Texas physician, considering him a “fine doctor and service member but also a friend.”
“That’s why I have to express my disappointment at the cheap shot you took at Joe Biden via Twitter,” the email reportedly read. “It was unprofessional and beneath the office that you once held. It was also disrespectful to me and the many friends you had in our administration.”
Rep Jackson was once nominated to lead the Veterans Affairs administration, but withdrew his name from consideration over allegations of workplace misconduct.
A report from the Department of Defense inspector general, based on 78 witness interviews and White House documents, found that Dr Jackson berated employees, made sexual comments about a female subordinate, and violated policy for drinking on presidential trips during his time in the White House.
Rep Jackson told the Texas Tribune he was “proud of the work environment I fostered under three different Presidents of both parties.”
“I take my professional responsibility with respect to prescription drug practices seriously; and I flat out reject any allegation that I consumed alcohol while on duty,” he said.
