President Joe Biden bade 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue adieu in a roughly 18-minute long Oval Office address Wednesday evening, five days before his predecessor and 2020 general election opponent, President-elect Donald Trump, is set to take office.
In his final address to the American people, Biden thanked the public for the honor of serving as president and wished Trump “success,” before pivoting to an ominous message about the alleged threat posed by a newly ascendant American oligarchy.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, the freedoms and the fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said.
The president was seemingly referring to the emerging coalition of tech entrepreneurs, led by Elon Musk, who lined up behind Trump ahead of the election and have rallied to support his agenda. Biden went on to take a pointed shot at Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, which phased out its fact-checking program earlier this week in favor of the community notes system pioneered by Musk.
“Social media is giving up on fact checking,” Biden said.
“AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation,” he continued.
“Now it’s your turn to stand guard,” Biden told the American people. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it too. God bless you all. May God protect our troops. Thank you for this great honor.”
Biden praised his vice president, Kamala Harris, and thanked his family for standing by his side in more than 50 years in public life. “You are the loves of my life and the life of my love,” he told his family.
The outgoing octogenarian president’s Wednesday evening address caps a chaotic presidency that will be remembered by mass illegal immigration at the southern border, sky-high inflation, a world on fire, and the fewest press conferences of any modern president since Ronald Reagan.
In an apparent response to the American electorate’s stunning rebuke of his presidency in the 2024 election, Biden praised his own administration’s achievements, which he said include shepherding the American people through the coronavirus pandemic and working alongside Congress to pass sweeping climate and infrastructure legislation into law. “The seeds are planted” for success, he said. And he warned of the continued threats America will face in social media misinformation and artificial intelligence.
The outgoing commander-in-chief’s Wednesday evening address marked in an effort to cement his legacy as one of competence and strength at home and on the world stage, despite the fallout from his own administration’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, the wars that broke out in Gaza and Ukraine during his presidency, and lengths that his own cadre of loyal aides went to shield his slip-ups from reporters, donors, lawmakers, and even his own cabinet secretaries.
Biden’s final weeks in the job included a flurry of executive action, including a ban on oil and drilling across hundreds of miles of coastal waters, and a sweeping pardon of his son, Hunter, that drew condemnation from members of his own party.
Wednesday’s address marked an end to Biden’s half-century long career in American politics, which included three runs for president, eight years as vice president, and more than three decades in the U.S. Senate where he served as chairman of the upper chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee. But in many ways, Biden said his real goodbye back in late July when he suspended his 2024 reelection campaign after a disastrous general-election debate that revealed his diminished state to the American people and the world.
The outgoing president and the first lady will carry their political grudges with them when they leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Particularly painful to Joe and Jill Biden is the role former Speaker Nancy Pelosi played in pressuring the president to suspend his reelection bid following his late June debate. “We were friends for 50 years,” the first lady told Washington Post in a recent interview. “It was disappointing.”
Flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier Wednesday, Biden praised his own administration’s role in helping broker a new cease-fire deal between Israeli and Hamas officials in Gaza.
“More than 15 months of conflict began with Hezbollah’s brutal massacre on October the seventh, more than 15 months of terror for the hostages, their families, the Israeli people, more than 15 months of suffering by the innocent people of Gaza fighting in Gaza stopped, and soon the hostages return home to their families.”
“During the next six weeks, Israel will negotiate the necessary arrangements to get phase two, which is a permanent end of the war,” Biden said. “Let me say it again, a permanent end of the war.”