D.C. Insider Sally Quinn accuses Jill Biden of “Elder Abuse”

Quinn: Hard to believe they didn’t know about Biden’s cancer

Legendary Washington hostess Sally Quinn has long been a defender of the Washington establishment, but the news of President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis has Sally on the offensive. Quinn pulls no punches in this wide-ranging interview, calling Biden “unpatriotic” and accusing the former first lady Jill Biden of being the enabler.

‘I blame Jill Biden for this,” Quinn said. “Jill Biden is his wife.”

“She clearly was in favor of his running and I just think it was a terrible disservice to the country.”

Quinn said Biden’s condition gave her flashbacks to what she experienced with her own late husband, Ben Bradlee, the Watergate-era Executive Editor of The Washington Post, who suffered with dementia before he died. She also said she doubts that the family didn’t know about Biden’s cancer diagnosis earlier.

Quinn is a columnist for The Washington Post, a paper that she calls a “ghost town” under Jeff Bezos’s leadership. She lets me into the conversations at her exclusive Washington salons: why her powerful dinner guests were reluctant to speak out and why their White House interventions always failed.

Now Democrats are dealing with fresh hell from President Donald Trump, who is ruling with a vengeance. We talk about her latest piece in The New York Times, “Watergate-Era Washington Was Less Toxic Than This.” According to Quinn, the establishment has been self-soothing at her house with improv parties featuring Bob Woodward. She goes into remarkable detail about the chilling fear in D.C. and why she believes that only salons can save This Town.

But will she invite Trump over? That may be a bridge too far—even for Quinn.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. You can watch the full interview on Youtube or listen to The Tara Palmeri Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music. Quinn has a new book coming out in a few months called Silent Retreat.

Tara Palmeri: What were your first thoughts when you heard that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized all the way to the bone?

Sally Quinn: I was shocked because I don't see how it got this far. I mean the president of the United States has the best medical care of anybody in the world and it should have been diagnosed a long time ago, and so it's hard for me not to believe that they didn't know about it. That's my little conspiracy theory, but I just don't understand how it got this far. Prostate cancer is curable, and I have so many male friends who've had prostate cancer and have survived with having had the PSA test when they should have, which you'd normally have an annual physical.

Rahm Emanuel's brother, Zeke Emanuel, who was a part of Biden's COVID task force, said on Morning Joe yesterday that he found it really hard to believe that it wasn't detected either because of the tests that you mentioned, unless President Biden chose not to take that test, which is recommended to all men between the ages of 55 and 70. Do you think that's possible?

I can't imagine it. They say often, well, if you have prostate cancer, if you're a certain age, you're not going to die of prostate cancer. But that's not true. People die of prostate cancer all the time. Why cut it off if you want to keep on living? It's just baffling to me, the whole thing.

You're infamous for hosting dinner parties in Washington with people of the highest levels of power. Did this ever come up that Biden might have cancer?

Never, never, no, I was shocked. I never heard a whisper about it.

Do you think your late husband Ben Bradlee would have taken the story about President Biden’s decline more seriously?

You can't say Ben would have done this, or Ben would have done that. I mean, you trust your reporters, and you listen to what is going on, and you print what you know, and what's the truth.

So, I mean, there were a number of people like Maureen Dowd and David Ignatius who wrote very strong pieces about how he shouldn't run early on. And it was clear to me, to all of us, that he was not able to do it. But he still had these people in the White House who were sticking up for him. And everybody I know was just appalled when he decided to run again because he clearly wasn't up to it.

I didn't hear, I mean everybody knew that there were problems with speech and dementia and people were distraught that he was running again. I don't know any reporter who didn't write something they knew about the president's condition.

The Wall Street Journal did probably the most comprehensive reporting when they reported on how Biden’s aides were modifying his schedule for his condition. I often wonder if someone like your late husband would have said in the paper in an editorial, if he's not fit enough to run, should he be fit enough to still be president?

Well, honestly, I blame Jill Biden for this. Jill Biden is his wife. And if Jill Biden had stood up and had gone to him and said, “Joe, you can't do it. And if you do, you're on your own. I'm out.” He wouldn't have run because he couldn't have done it without her support. And I just think it was a terrible disservice to the country.

I felt sorry for Joe Biden because I didn't think she was