Did President Joe Biden brag that he has "ended cancer as we know it"? No, that's not true: He said that if he could accomplish one large goal, it would be ending cancer. It was clear from the context that he was not claiming cancer had ended under his administration. The statement was made during a White House speech in which Biden touted new efforts to push insurance companies to increase mental health care coverage.
The claim appeared in a video on Instagram on July 25, 2023. It opened with Biden speaking, while a graphic displays the text:
Biden says: "We ended cancer as we know it."
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Jul 28 14:11:34 2023 UTC)
The claim that Biden said he "ended cancer as we know it" did not include what he said immediately preceding that quote: He was speaking hypothetically about one large goal he would like to achieve. While Biden, who has a stutter, is difficult to clearly understand in the video, the context of his remarks show that he was not claiming that he and his administration had already ended cancer.
The official transcript from the White House (archived here) states that Biden said, "We can end cancer as we know it":
One of the things I'm always asked is: You know, why -- why Americans have sort of lost faith for a while on being -- being able to do big things.
'If you could do anything at all, Joe, what would you do?' I said, 'I'd cure cancer.' And they looked at me like, 'Why cancer?' Because no one thinks we can. That's why. And we can. We can end cancer as we know it.
Lead Stories has contacted the White House and any response will be added.
A video posted on the White House's official YouTube channel shows Biden's remarks beginning at 12:59:
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about President Biden can be found here.
