Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta expressed a grave concern to former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on his show Wednesday: that former President Joe Biden might die in office before the 2024 election.
During an appearance on “The Jim Acosta Show,” Acosta, citing Biden’s reported physical and cognitive issues during his presidency, directly questioned Jean-Pierre about the political risk he felt the former president took by running for re-election.
“I guess I was worried that he couldn’t make it another four years physically, like he could die in office or something like that,” Acosta stated, linking his worry to his desire to prevent a return to the presidency by Donald Trump, whom he called a “danger to this country.”
Acosta elaborated on his pre-election anxiety, asking, “My concern was that it was too great a risk to take for Joe Biden to have run again in 2024. And I thought going into that cycle, I was like, ‘Gosh, what if he were to get the nomination and something were to happen? Or what if, on the day before the election, something were to happen?’ … What do you make of that when you hear it from people?”
Jean-Pierre, who repeatedly downplayed concerns about Biden’s health during her tenure as press secretary, declined to directly address the hypothetical scenario.
“Look, I think he decided to run. These are a lot of hypotheticals,” she responded. “It turned out the way that it did. And I can’t go back in time in that fashion, right?”
Instead of dwelling on the “hypotheticals,” Jean-Pierre pivoted to discussing the Democrats’ loss in the 2024 election. “I think it is important to learn from what happened during this time last year — why we lost, millions of people who came out in 2020 didn’t come out in 2024,” she said, urging Democrats to “really look under the hood and figure out what happened.”
The discussion on Biden’s health comes amid reports of his struggles during his term. Biden’s personal office announced a prostate cancer diagnosis in May, a condition that medical experts suggested he likely had throughout his presidency. Furthermore, the former president himself had voiced uncertainty about completing another full term, telling USA Today in a January interview, “Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”
Jean-Pierre concluded the segment by noting that Biden is expected to explain his decision to seek re-election in his upcoming book.
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