President Joe Biden warned Americans of a “dangerous concentration of power” in the hands of a “very few ultra-wealthy people” and the impact he feared it would have on the country's democracy in his farewell address.
“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, a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said Wednesday from the Oval Office.
The president, in his last planned remarks to the American people, said he worried of the consequences if efforts by wealthy Americans to turn back efforts to combat climate change and disinformation went unchecked. And the president drew a parallel to former President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address warning of a “military industrial complex,” saying the nation now faced a threat from a “tech industrial complex.”
“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power,” Biden said.
The address, which capped the president's five-decade career in politics, also returned to familiar themes about the need to preserve and protect democratic ideals. Taken as a whole, it offered a direct and populist critique of successor Donald Trump and his allies — many of whom are drawn from the ranks of the country's business and financial elite.
Elon Musk, the world's richest person, helped bankroll Trump's electoral victory and has been given a broad portfolio in his new administration, while other tech titans have sought to curry favor with inaugural donations and pilgramages to the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort.
“Powerful forces want to wield their unchecked influence to eliminate the steps we've taken to tackle the climate crisis, to serve their own interest for power and profit. We must not be bullied into sacrificing the future,” Biden said.
Biden has sought to cast his presidency as one defined by an economic turnaround in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and policies which strengthened US alliances but is exiting office with his party having lost control of the White House, both chambers of Congress in Republican hands, and polls showing his own popularity at new lows.
Biden's approval rating has fallen to 36.1%, lower at this stage of his presidency than every one of his predecessors since Jimmy Carter, according to polling data aggregated by FiveThirtyEight.
Wednesday's address marked the end of a half-century of political life that saw Biden rise from the Senate to the White House only to endure a tumultuous presidency. He achieved early legislative victories but those were overtaken by voter angst about high inflation and worries about his age and mental acuity.
Those concerns, magnified by a faltering debate performance that highlighted his increasingly evident decline, saw him face pressure from his own party to set the stage for a younger generation and become the first US president since 1968 to forgo seeking reelection.
Biden was joined in the Oval Office by Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced him atop the Democratic ticket and lost the election to Trump. While Biden and Harris cast Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, they will be attending his inauguration on Monday, after the Republican pulled off one of the most stunning political comebacks in US history.
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