Joe Biden Comforts Meghan McCain Over Her Father’s Cancer Diagnosis: ‘You Have to Have Hope’

Joe Biden consoled Meghan McCain Wednesday in an emotional moment on The View, telling her to maintain hope as her father undergoes treatment for the same brain cancer that killed his son.

Arizona Sen. John McCain announced in July that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor called glioblastoma. Biden’s son, Beau, died in 2015 after a battle with the same cancer. The former Vice President wrote about his son’s death in his new book, Promise Me, Dad.

“I couldn’t get through your book, I tried,” Meghan McCain told Biden on Wednesday through tears. “I think about Beau almost every day.”

She asked Biden what he would tell other cancer patients and their families as they cope with tragedy.

“There is hope, and if anybody can make it, your Dad — her Dad is one my best friends. Her Dad goes after me hammer and tongs,” he said, adding that researchers were finding breakthroughs in the fight against cancer every day. “We’re like two brothers who were somehow raised by different fathers or something because of our points of view.”

Biden said his son also drew courage from John McCain.

“I know if I pick up the phone tonight and call John McCain, and said, ‘John, I’m at Second and Vine in Oshkosh, and I need your help, come,’ he’d get on a plane and come. And I would for him too,” he said.

“The thing that I found was — and Beau insisted on, your Dad’s going to insist on — is you’ve got to maintain hope,” Biden said. “You have to have hope.”