The soul of America remains “at stake”, warns Joe Biden, who delivered his farewell speech to the country on Wednesday, in a message to Americans mixing pride in a duty accomplished and a call for vigilance before the return of Donald Trump in power.
• Also read: Biden creates two national monuments just before Trump returns
• Also read: Biden removes Cuba from blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism
• Also read: Uninhibited, tumultuous, vengeful: what to expect from Donald Trump’s second term?
At the start of his speech, the current president warned of “an oligarchy taking shape” in America.
The Democratic leader also warned in this final address to the Nation of a “dangerous concentration of powers in the hands of a handful of ultra-rich people”.
He also indicated that he is worried about “powerful forces” who want to undermine the fight against climate change. “Americans are buried under an avalanche of disinformation,” he noted.
AFP
“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. Our very essence was at stake. This is still the case,” notes the outgoing president, in a letter to his compatriots disclosed by the White House, before he delivers a solemn address from the Oval Office at 8 p.m.
When he returns to his Republican rival on Monday the keys to the White House, which he had taken from him after a hard struggle four years ago, the 82-year-old Democrat will experience a supreme humiliation.
In 2019, Joe Biden assured that Donald Trump “would go down in history as a passing aberration”.
AFP
But it is his presidency which for the moment stands out as an anomaly, or the final hiccup of a bygone era, in a country shaken by violent political, cultural and economic changes.
“The ideal of America is in your hands,” warns Joe Biden in this testamentary letter, which does not contain the name of Donald Trump.
But he mentions it implicitly, recalling that when he came to power in January 2021, the United States was not only in the grip of the pandemic and a violent economic crisis, but also faced with “the worst attack against democracy since the Civil War.
Joe Biden was sworn in two weeks after the assault on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, who refused to recognize the defeat of their champion in the presidential election.
AFP
Special prosecutor Jack Smith has since concluded that the Republican would have been convicted of unlawful attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election had he not been re-elected.
“Privilege of my life”
Joe Biden, an unpopular president who has never been able to remove concerns about his age or thwart the appeal of Donald Trump’s populist rhetoric, also wants to defend his record.
“Today our economy is the strongest in the world,” writes the man who leaves his successor with robust growth and very low unemployment.
“Inflation continues to fall,” he continues, at the end of a mandate marked by a very sharp rise in the cost of living, which heavily penalized him politically.
Joe Biden also emphasizes that violent crime is at its lowest level in fifty years, before handing over the keys to the White House to Donald Trump who describes America as a country ravaged by insecurity.
“Serving this country for fifty years has been the privilege of my life,” concludes the man who was senator, vice-president then president, and who long believed that he could beat Donald Trump again.
A few hours before his speech, he also had the consolation of reaping the fruits of “tenacious and meticulous” diplomatic activity to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip after fifteen months of war. .
The agreement, for which his advisors and those of Donald Trump worked “as a team,” he said, will come into force on Sunday, on the eve of the transfer of power.
In an interview published Wednesday in the Washington PostJill Biden, his wife and unwavering ally in the face of many family tragedies as well as political trials, declares: “I hope that [les Américains] will remember Joe as a strong, empathetic, honest and upright president.
Before adding, as if she didn’t really believe it: “Because righteousness is what matters most, isn’t it?”
The Democratic president had decided in the spring of 2023 to run again against Donald Trump but withdrew from the race in July, giving way to Vice-President Kamala Harris, clearly beaten on November 5.
Watch a clip from his latest White House speech in the video above.
