Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created the comic strip “Dilbert,” said on his podcast Monday that he had the same kind of aggressive prostate cancer as former President Joe Biden and that it had spread to his bones. He said he had only months to live.
“My life expectancy is maybe this summer,” he said.
Adams, 67, is a supporter of President Donald Trump and has been critical of Biden, but Monday he expressed his sympathy for the former president.
“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,” Adams said. “It's a terrible disease — it's going to get very painful for the president.”
It was not clear when Adams was diagnosed, but he said he decided to share the news after learning that Biden had the same disease, in part because he hoped that Biden's announcement would draw attention away from his own. He had kept quiet about it to prolong a sense of normalcy, he said: “Once you go public, you're just the dying cancer guy.”
Adams said he was also wary of sharing his diagnosis because he wanted to avoid the kind of negative online attention Biden has received since his office announced the news Sunday.
“One of the things I've been watching is how terrible the public is,” he said, adding that people had been “cruel.”
“There's no sympathy for Joe Biden for a lot of people,” Adams said. “It's hard to watch.”
Adams created “Dilbert,” which mocks office culture, in 1989, and it was syndicated around the world.
In 2023, hundreds of newspapers dropped the cartoon after Adams said on his podcast that Black people were “a hate group” and that white people should “just get the hell away” from them in response to a public opinion poll conducted by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports that asked 1,000 U.S. adults, “Do you agree or disagree with this statement, 'It's OK to be white?'” according to NPR.
The report found that 72% of the respondents agreed, including 53% of Black respondents, while 26% of Black respondents disagreed and 21% said they are “not sure.” The poll also found that 79% of all the respondents agreed with the statement “Black people can be racist too.”
The statement “It's OK to be white” has been repeated on right-wing websites and in speeches, according to NPR. The Anti-Defamation League has denounced it as a hate chant.
On his podcast at the time, he defended his remarks, saying that “you should absolutely be racist whenever it's to your advantage.” He later said his comments were intended as hyperbole.
On Monday, Trump said he was surprised that Biden's diagnosis wasn't made public earlier, seeming to suggest without evidence that the former president's cancer had been covered up. But Adams said on his podcast that it was possible for Biden to not have been showing symptoms when he received a clean bill of health from his doctor last year.
Part of Adams' sympathy for Biden seemed to come from his own lived experience with the disease, which he called “intolerable.” Adams said he had been using a walker for months and was in a constant state of pain. Apart from recording his podcast, he said, he spends most of his days sleeping. As a California resident, he indicated that he would be using aid-in-dying drugs, which are available to the terminally ill in the state.
“I don't have good days,” he said. “Every day is a nightmare. And evening is even worse.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
First Published: May 23, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
