Yesterday, Biden said that he has cancer. While giving a speech about the effects of emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Claymont, Del., Biden commented, “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer”:

The White House rushed to do the cleanup job for the president. Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, pointed to a tweet by Glenn Kessler that described how Biden had non-melanoma skin cancers removed before taking office.

Still, the reaction to the comment — or rather the non-reaction — is telling. Greg Price, senior digital strategist at X Strategies, makes a great point:

It’s somewhat amazing that when our POTUS speaks, we don’t necessarily believe what he says. Biden declared that he has a potentially deadly disease, and many of us just assumed it was a gaffe.

This also makes me wonder what happened to the Washington Post Fact Checker team. During the Trump presidency, the Post tracked all of Trump’s alleged “false or misleading statements” — 30,573 of them. Yet, when the candidate they supported took office, they stopped keeping track. Given Biden’s myriad lies, misleading statements, and gaffes, I think they should probably get that team up and running again.