In late May 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump said, "If you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry because he's vicious," about former President Joe Biden. Trump made the alleged remark about two weeks after Biden announced he had prostate cancer.
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Readers searched our site to find out if it was true.
Trump indeed said, "If you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry because he's vicious," about Biden during a news conference (archived) on May 30, 2025. Therefore, we rate this claim as a correct attribution.
However, it wasn't perfectly clear from the surrounding context exactly what Trump thought people would — but in his opinion shouldn't — feel sorry for Biden about. Most people who commented about it on social media assumed Trump meant Biden's cancer diagnosis.
The White House press office did not elaborate on what Trump meant and instead referred us to the livestream of the May 30 news conference.
Trump said on May 30, 2025, while discussing immigration during the Biden administration and an oft-touted, unproven theory that countries across the world send criminals from prisons into the U.S. (time code 48:15, our emphasis):
One thing I can't figure out is, what would an administration -- what were they thinking when they allowed millions of people from prisons all over the world, not just from South America, Venezuela, all over the world, from the Congo in Africa, hundreds of people, thousands of people from the Congo, rough, rough prisoners from the Congo in Africa, hundreds of people, thousands of people from the Congo, rough, rough prisoners from Asia, from Europe, rough parts of Europe. Why would they allow them to come into our country? Why would they do that?
It's the one thing I can't figure out, and I don't believe it was Joe Biden. I really don't. I mean, look, he's been a sort of a moderate person over his lifetime. Not a smart person, but a somewhat vicious person, I will say. If you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry because he's vicious. What he did with his political opponent and all of the people that he hurt, he hurt a lot of people by — and so, I really don't feel sorry for him.
But he wasn't a person that would allow murderers to come into our country. He wasn't a person that was in favor of transgender for anybody that wanted it. Take kids out of families, et cetera, et cetera. So I just don't understand why, why a thing like this, how a thing like this could have been allowed to happen. Very sad.
It's very sad. It's very sad. Very sad for our country.
Trump didn't explicitly mention or discuss Biden's cancer diagnosis during the May 30 news conference, though Biden himself was quoted the same day as saying "All the folks are optimistic" about his treatment prognosis.
Biden's cancer diagnosis hadn't kept Trump from repeatedly bashing the former president online and in the press. For example, after initially wishing Biden a "fast and successful" recovery on May 18, the following day Trump repeatedly suggested that Biden had purposely hidden his cancer diagnosis.