Joe Biden says he has cancer in awkward speech slip up

US President Joe Biden addresses the crowd and gathered media at the closed Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. Photo / Getty Images

Joe Biden said that he has "cancer" on Wednesday, in the latest awkward slip of the tongue from the US President.

The 79-year-old made the eyebrow-raising comment during a speech in Somerset, Massachusetts, as he announced a slew of executive actions to tackle the "climate crisis".

Biden was telling an anecdote about his mother driving him to school as a child.

"And because it was a four-lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove us rather than us be able to walk," he said.

"And guess what? The first frost, you know what was happening? You had to put on your windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer, and why, for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation."

Conservative website Townhall pointed out that Biden told the same story in April, referring to "asthma" rather than cancer.

"I went to a small little school that was about a mile from the apartment complex we lived in, a little school called Holy Rosary," he said at the time.

US President Joe Biden addresses the crowd and gathered media at the closed Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. Photo / Getty Images

"And you couldn't walk to school, because although it was a four-lane access highway it was just too dangerous to cross some of the streets. And my mother would get … and when it came spring … I mean, when it came the fall – this is the God's truth – you'd get in the car with a little frost on the window, turn on the windshield wiper there'd be an oil slick, not a joke. I have asthma and 80 per cent of the people who in fact we grew up with have asthma."

The White House later retracted the gaffe, clarifying that the President had "non-melanoma" skin cancer before taking office last year.