By Adeel Hassan New York Times
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Former President Joe Biden said Friday afternoon that he was feeling good after beginning treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

“The prognosis is good,” he said.

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“We’re working on everything. All the folks are optimistic,” he added, referring to his medical team. He said that one of the surgeons treating him was given the same diagnosis 32 years ago.

Biden spoke to reporters after an event honoring veterans in New Castle, Delaware, making his first public remarks since May 18, when his office announced his illness and said the cancer had metastasized to the bone. Biden attended the event, which fell on the 10th anniversary of the death of his son Beau, with Beau’s son, Robert Biden II, who graduated from high school this week.

Biden said that his treatment was “all a matter of taking a pill, one particular pill.”

“The expectation is we’re going to be able to beat this,” he said.

Biden’s cancer was given a Gleason score of 9. The score is used to describe how prostate cancers look under a microscope; 9 and 10 are the most aggressive.

Biden, 82, left office in January as the oldest-serving president in American history.

Asked about a new book, “Original Sin,” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which details how Biden’s advisers curbed discussion of his age-related limitations in the run-up to the 2024 election, he responded tongue-in-cheek, saying, “You can see that I’m mentally incompetent and I can’t walk.”

He added that he “could beat the hell out of both of” the authors.

Biden also said that he had no regrets for deciding to run for reelection, before ultimately dropping out. He responded to a question about Democrats who hold that he should not have by saying: “Why didn’t anyone run against me then?

“We have a lot going on, and I think we’re in a really difficult moment, not only in America, but in the world,” Biden quickly added. “I think that this is one of those inflection points in history.”

He said that he was “very proud” of his time in office. “I put my record as president against any president at all,” he said. He added that leading presidential historians ranked his term highly, and that President Donald Trump was rated last.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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