Soon after Biden’s announcement, the mainstream media machine, including cable networks that are themselves around the same age as the former president, got to work reassuring its readers and viewers that everything was okay.

Quoting a UCLA Health director, NBC reported, “In no way would this have any impact on his ability to govern, even if he were still president today.” Except it could have. In fact, it did.

A less advanced case of prostate cancer incapacitated one of Biden’s cabinet officials last year, causing its own scandal and leaving our gazillion dollar nuclear weapons command and control system unmanned. Then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a spry 70 years old at the time, underwent surgery for his own prostate cancer (detected early in screening) and neglected to tell anyone in the White House that he’d be unavailable.

Now people are asking if he knew about the cancer earlier. I’m not going to pretend to have any idea. Someone who does is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist who worked with Biden in his transition team, who on MSNBC’s Morning Joe suggested he’d had the cancer for years.

“He did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that.