By Steve Holland, Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden said an oligarchy is forming in the U.S. that threatens democracy, issuing the bleak warning on Wednesday in his final Oval Office speech as he prepares to hand over power to Donald Trump next week.
Biden opened his speech with a familiar message – asking Americans to join together – but quickly warned about a dangerous concentration of wealth in the United States.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said.
He warned of a “tech industrial complex” that is bringing an “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power.” The free press, he added, “is crumbling.”
Biden’s farewell address, capping half a century in politics, sought to bolster a legacy that has been overshadowed by Democrats’ failure to stop the Republican Trump from returning to the White House.
Trump, who takes office at noon (1700 GMT) on Monday, has enlisted billionaire Elon Musk, who helped his election efforts, as a special adviser charged with cutting costs from the federal government.
Trump has nominated a slate of cabinet members who have pledged to upend traditional American alliances and governing norms. The November 2024 election left the Democratic Party with little leverage in national politics.
Biden ran for president in 2020 as a transition figure, but opted at the unprecedented age of 80 to run for reelection, convinced he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump.
Forced out of the race in July after a disastrous debate against Trump, Biden has been blamed by some Democrats for their November wipeout, after Vice President Kamala Harris’ whirlwind campaign lost every battleground state.
Biden and his allies oversaw the recovery from COVID-19, funded an infrastructure revival, sparked new semiconductor chips manufacturing, and tackled climate change as they tried to rebalance inequality and invest in the future. He leaves an outperforming U.S. economy and optimistic businesses.
But Biden was unable to heal divisions in the country the way he had hoped, or stop democratic backsliding around the world. Now the Republican president-elect has vowed to undo much of what the Democratic administration accomplished.
“All Joe Biden wanted was to be remembered for the great things he did for this country and, at least in the short run, they’ve been eclipsed by his ill-conceived decision to run,” said David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.
“He became a historic president when he defeated Trump. So obviously the fact that Trump is resurgent and returning to power, more powerful than he was when he left, is an unhappy coda to the story.”
BIDEN DEFENDS HIS RECORD
Biden addressed what he described as an ongoing threat to the country in a letter released early Wednesday by the White House.
“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. And, that’s still the case,” he said, urging Americans to keep fighting for the country’s focus on equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
A White House official said legacies are set over the long term.
“In historical terms, it has been a millisecond since the election. This president has locked in the most significant legislative record since LBJ (President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s), and the irreversible benefits of those laws will grow over decades,” the official said.
Senator Chris Coons, a longtime ally, said that when Biden took office he faced an economic crisis, a public health crisis, and a democracy crisis following the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.
“The country was in the depths of crises. The recovery from that pandemic has been his single greatest accomplishment,” Coons said.
Biden’s administration oversaw the distribution of COVID vaccines and an economic recovery that defied predictions of a recession, even as inflation soared and prices remained high, which soured voters on his economic stewardship.
Republicans capitalized on public frustration in last year’s election, accusing Democrats of elitism and disconnect from working-class voters, while blaming immigrants for high prices, despite a lack of evidence.
“You cannot reverse four and a half decades of rising inequality with a few years of absolute good economic outcomes and policy changes,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “But one of the most fundamental things they did was provide relief recovery at the scale that was needed to generate a strong jobs recovery.”
AFGHANISTAN, ISRAEL
Biden, who spent more than three decades in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president to Obama, cites a unified Western response to Russia’s war with Ukraine, the strengthening of alliances and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as key foreign policy achievements.
Thirteen U.S. military personnel died during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021, and Biden’s popularity never recovered.
His staunch support for Israel in its war in Gaza after the deadly Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, split the Democratic Party, and Biden’s reputation with the left suffered.
Vincent Rigby, a former senior national security adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said Biden would forever be remembered as an “interlude” president despite his solid achievements in rebuilding trust in the United States after Trump’s first term.
“We’ll see how history treats him five, 10, 15 years from now, but he’ll be seen as the president between the two Trump presidencies. He held the line, but Trump came back.”
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Andrea ShalalEditing by Heather Timmons, Leslie Adler, Shri Navaratnam and Jon Boyle)
