Joe Biden's Farewell Address

Joe Biden's farewell address was the final official speech of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, delivered in the Oval Office on January 15, 2025.

Background

Biden served his single term as the 46th President of the United States, winning the 2020 presidential election against Republican incumbent president Donald Trump. He was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. However, Trump refused to accept his loss and attempted to overturn the election results. While in office, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recession. He appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States. In his foreign policy, the U.S. reentered the Paris Agreement. Biden oversaw the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops that ended the war in Afghanistan, leading to the Taliban seizing control. He responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia and authorizing aid to Ukraine. During the Gaza war, Biden condemned the actions of Hamas as terrorism, strongly supported Israel's military efforts, and sent limited humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A temporary ceasefire proposal he backed was adopted shortly before he left office. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress until Republicans won a slim majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections. Republicans took control of the Senate after the 2024 elections.

Concerns about Biden's age and health persisted throughout his term. He became the first president to turn 80 while in office. He began his presidency with majority support, but saw his approval ratings decline significantly throughout his presidency, in part due to public frustration over inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 but dropped to 2.9% by the end of his presidency. Biden initially ran for reelection and, after the Democratic primaries, he became the party's presumptive nominee in the 2024 presidential election. After his poor performance in the first presidential debate, renewed scrutiny from across the political spectrum about his cognitive ability led him to withdraw from the race. Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. Harris subsequently became the Democratic nominee in the 2024 Democratic National Convention with Tim Walz as her running mate, but they subsequently lost the general election to Trump and JD Vance. Biden's administration is ranked favorably by historians and scholars, diverging from public assessments of his tenure. He is the oldest living former U.S. president.

After Trump's victory, Biden and Trump met and commenced the presidential transition. During the period of Trump's being president-elect, he planned on having billionaires like Vivek Ramaswamy (before Ramaswamy's withdrawal) and Elon Musk in his second presidential administration. Once Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2025, the Democratic Party would lose control of the presidency in addition to falling short of a majority in the House and Senate. The party also had a minority of state legislature seats and governorships.

Address

Biden began his speech at 8:00 p.m. EST from the Oval Office. Biden's wife Jill, his son Hunter, Hunter's wife Melissa, their son Beau, Biden's granddaughter Finnegan, and vice president Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were present in the Oval Office during the speech. He initially covered the history of the United States and described the Statue of Liberty as a representation of the U.S. Biden claimed that an oligarchy was taking hold in the U.S., invoking Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, in which Eisenhower argued that the military–industrial complex was influencing the country; he criticized the "tech–industrial complex". He boasted of provisions to combat climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden indirectly criticized Meta Platforms's decision to end its fact-checking program. He also wished the incoming Trump administration "great success".

See also

* Barack Obama's farewell address
* Donald Trump's first farewell address

References

External links

President Biden's farewell address
(speech and transcript)

{{United States presidential farewell addresses

Farewell Address
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