US President Joe Biden delivered a farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, January 15, seizing what may be his final opportunity to reshape Americans’ grim views on his term before he departs the White House.
“I wish the incoming administration success,” Biden said of President-elect Trump and his team, but also warned of an “oligarchy” forming.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said, drawing attention to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people. Dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”
Invoking President Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex when he left office, he added, “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers to our country as well.”
Biden sounded the alarm as some of the world’s richest individuals and titans of its technology industry have flocked to Trump’s side in recent months, particularly after his November victory. Billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $100 million on helping Trump get elected, and executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have donated to Trump’s inaugural committee and made pilgrimages to Trump’s private club in Florida for an audience with the president-elect.
Biden also called for a constitutional amendment to end immunity for sitting presidents, after the Supreme Court granted Trump sweeping protections last year from criminal liability over his role in trying to undermine his 2020 defeat to Biden.
Speaking of his major accomplishments on Wednesday, Biden insisted he achieved economic growth while protecting the environment and warned against a drive to undermine his record on global warming.
“We’re doing both, but powerful forces want to wield their unchecked influence to eliminate the steps we’ve taken to tackle the climate crisis,” Biden said.
‘Soul of America’
Earlier in the day, Biden heralded a long-awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which could end more than a year of bloodshed in the Middle East.
“It’ll take time to feel the full impact of what we’ve done together but the seeds are planted and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” Biden said, tacitly acknowledging that many Americans say they have yet to feel the impacts of his trillions of dollars in domestic initiatives.
But Biden isn’t leaving the White House in the way that he hoped. He originally tried to run for reelection, brushing aside voters’ concerns that he would be 86 years old at the end of a second term. After stumbling in a debate with Trump, Biden dropped out of the race under pressure from his own party.
He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November. Now Biden is preparing to cede power to someone he’s described as an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
He implicitly acknowledged that his promises remained unfulfilled in an open letter released Wednesday morning.
“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake,” Biden wrote. “The very nature of who we are was at stake. And, that’s still the case.”
The rest of the letter emphasized his accomplishments, including guiding the country out of the coronavirus pandemic, supporting domestic manufacturing and limiting the cost of prescription drugs.
Wednesday night’s speech caps not only Biden’s presidency but his five decades in politics. He was once the country’s youngest senator at 30 years old after being elected to represent his home state of Delaware in 1972.
Biden pursued the presidency in 1988 and 2008 before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president. After serving two terms, Biden was considered to be retired from politics. But he returned to center stage as the unlikely Democratic nominee in 2020, successfully ousting Trump from the White House.
“Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States,” Biden wrote in his letter. “I have given my heart and my soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people.”
