A powerful video has resurfaced that shows then–former Vice President Joe Biden consoling a sobbing Meghan McCain on The View as she discussed her father’s grim cancer diagnosis.
But now, in a cruel twist of fate, it’s Biden who’s in need of comfort with his inspirational words now laced with irony following news of his aggressive, metastatic prostate cancer.
The clip, filmed in December 2017, shows Meghan McCain break down mid-question as she asks Biden how to cope with watching a loved one battle cancer.
Her father, Senator John McCain, had just been diagnosed with glioblastoma – the same aggressive brain cancer that had claimed Beau Biden, the president’s eldest son, just two years earlier.
Without hesitation, Biden walks around the table to speak to her close up, clasps Meghan’s hand, and says with quiet intensity: ‘There is hope… If anyone can make it, it’s your dad.’
The studio fell silent as Biden described the ‘breakthroughs’ happening in cancer research, urging her not to give up and to hold onto faith.
Now, as Biden grapples with his own diagnosis – a Gleason score of 9, prostate cancer that has already spread to his bones, the same words feel heavier.
Biden who can be seem promising hope in the clip is now fighting the same disease he once tried to soothe others through.
A powerful video from 2017 shows then–former Vice President Biden consoling a sobbing Meghan McCain on The View as she discussed her father’s grim cancer diagnosis
Biden’s son Beau died of the same type of cancer that Meghan’s father John McCain was diagnosed with in July 2017
‘I think about Beau almost every day,’ Meghan said, ‘and I was told that this doesn’t get easier but you cultivate the tools to work with this and live with this.’
In the interview, Biden spoke candidly about the private agony of watching a loved one suffer.
He recalled late-night calls with John McCain, whom he described as a political opponent but a lifelong friend, ‘like two brothers raised by different fathers.
‘Her dad goes after me hammer and tongs, we’re like two brothers who were somehow raised by different fathers or something because of our points of view,’ Biden, who was 75 at the time, said with a smile.
He then made Meghan start laughing when he recalled how McCain had told him to ‘get the hell off the ticket’ at one point during the 2008 campaign.
Biden said the most important thing he learned from his son’s cancer battle is how important it is to maintain hope.
McCain, 81, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor, in July 2017. He finally passed away in August 2018. Megan is pictured by his side in a photo from 2014
McCain was diagnosed with the same kind of cancer Biden’s son Beau died of in 2015. Beau is pictured above with his father in 2008. Beau died at the age of 46
He told Meghan: ‘The thing that I’ve found was, and Beau insisted on and your dad is gonna insist on, is you gotta maintain hope. There’s hope, you have to have hope,’ Biden said.
McCain, 81, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor, in July 2017. He finally passed away in August 2018.
Biden’s message of hope became central to his ‘Cancer Moonshot’ initiative, which he launched as vice president and revived as president in 2022 – a deeply personal crusade against a disease that took his son and threatened families across the country.
