Polarized reactions to Biden’s farewell speech validate divisions he highlighted
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Responses from lawmakers underlined the very democratic fragility the president looked to highlight. Joe Biden’s farewell address warning that “an oligarchy is taking shape” which threatens American democracy sparked polarized reactions from lawmakers that seemed to validate the very democratic fragility the president looked to highlight.
Speaking from the Oval Office for the final time before president-elect Donald Trump’s return to power, on Wednesday Biden sounded an alarm about America’s future. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America,” he said, that posed a challenge to “our basic rights and freedoms”.
Biden urged the US to beware what he described as a growing “tech-industrial complex”, appearing to deliberately echo the 1961 farewell address by a previous president, Dwight Eisenhower, whose warning of a “military-industrial complex” became a byword for the overreach of American corporate power in the democratic sphere.
Biden’s remarks amounted to a not-so-veiled jab at tech billionaires Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who have collectively not just amassed hitherto unseen wealth but have all recently made public gestures of support for Trump. All three are expected to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Within hours, however, Biden’s speech had devolved into another partisan battleground – perhaps the clearest illustration of the political division that has dogged his presidency. “President Biden delivered his farewell address to a nation that is stronger because of his leadership,” the former House speaker and California representative Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. She praised what she called “four historic years of progress, hope and unity for American families”.
