Did U.S. President Donald Trump publicly say or write that his predecessor, Joe Biden, "destroyed our country" and now "cancer is destroying him" in August 2026? No, that's not true: Lead Stories did not find evidence that the exact viral quote shared on social media actually belonged to Trump. It did not originate from any of his accounts on social media, and no credible newsroom reported that he said the phrase in question.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published by @SpencerHakimian on August 9, 2026. It opened:
Donald Trump on Joe Biden's cancer: 'He destroyed our country. Now cancer is destroying him. I don't feel bad for him.'
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Scarletkoito333 on X.)
The claim spread online the day after former president's son Hunter Biden said (archived here) that his father's cancer got worse.
A Google search across the White House site for the precise wording from the supposed quote showed no exact matches (archived here). A broader search for the precise wording from the alleged remarks across all government websites produced no results, either (archived here).
Lead Stories searched Trump's account on Truth Social for the keywords "Biden", "cancer" and "Biden", "diagnosis", but found no confirmation that he actually wrote anything remotely similar to what the post reviewed in this fact check claimed. The only matching result sent a very different message:
(Image source: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social.)
Lead Stories searched Trump's account on X for the keywords seen here, and that did not produce a confirmation of the quote's authenticity. The inquiry only returned one result from 2020, which predated Joe Biden's May 2025 diagnosis (archived here) by roughly five years:
(Image source: X.)
A search across the archive of Trump's posts on social media for what he published since Biden's diagnosis was made public did not produce relevant results:
(Image source: trumpstruth.org.)
A search across Google News for the keywords seen here didn't show any credible reporting corroborating the claim.
The next day after the May 18, 2025, post cited above, Trump talked to reporters, and he said the following words (archived here):
I think it's very sad, actually.
Then, he went on to suggest that the diagnosis had been hidden from the public, but Biden's team refuted (archived here) that.
Later, on May 30, 2025, Trump, however, referred to Biden as "vicious" and said that "if you feel sorry for him, don't".
Yet, Lead Stories found no record of Trump saying what was attributed to him in August 2026 in the post that is the focus of this fact check.
