While Adams has positioned himself as far, far to the right of the former president in the past, he expressed sympathy for him in his announcement. “I’d like to extend my respect and compassion and sympathy for the ex-president and his family because they’re going to be going through an especially tough time,” he said. “It’s a terrible disease—it’s going to get very painful for the president.”
While Adams said he’s been living with the disease for a while now, the timing of his announcement is not a coincidence. In his podcast, he said he hoped to “slide under” Biden’s own announcement, so the former president would take some of the attention off him. “Once you go public, you’re just the dying cancer guy,” he said. At the same time, Adams also expressed that people were “really cruel” to Biden after he shared his diagnosis, and he wanted to “reduce the amount of time that people were being terrible to me online.”
While Adams said that he doesn’t “have good days” anymore, he does have a rather enlightened perspective on the time he has left. “It’s kind of civilized that you know about how long you have, so you can put your affairs together and make sure you’ve said your goodbyes and done all the things you need to do,” he shared. “So if you had to pick a way to die, this one’s really painful, like really, really painful. But it’s also kind of good that it gives you enough time while your brain is still working to wrap things up.”
