Joe Biden hypocritically warns America in his farewell about Trump’s abuses of power | Opinion
Wednesday night, President Joe Biden offered an eloquent explanation of what makes America so great that it doesn’t need much making it great again. Told in vivid brush strokes of how the Statue of Liberty was built one steel beam at a time, Biden made a strong case for all that America has achieved and all that we must preserve at a time when American values are threatened by the new guy who must not be named.
But in making his case — marred only occasionally by slurring and other signs of infirmity — President Biden offered little reflection on what role he played in creating the danger of centralized power that can be so readily abused. “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 and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead … The president’s power … is not absolute. And it shouldn’t be,” Biden said.
That’s as clear a warning about the dangers of Donald Trump and the coterie of billionaires and sycophants he has surrounded himself with as you’ll hear.
Indeed, when Trump sets foot in the White House, he will hold more unchecked power than any president has ever had, and that fact is as much Joe Biden’s doing as anyone’s.
With the CHIPS Act, Biden has given Trump levers over our economy that have never existed before at such scale. With the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden has given Trump authority over untold billions that will reshape our nation’s energy economy and infrastructure, not in the mold of those who passed it, but in the mold of those now stepping in to spend it.
Biden made much of the spending plans his administration has put in place over the last four years, but most of that money remains unspent. Biden patted himself on the back for spreading access to high-speed internet to more Americans than ever, but he forgot to mention that not a single soul has internet today because Biden brought it to them.
With the Affordable Care Act, which Biden helped sell to the American people as vice president, our soon-to-be-former president gave Trump authority over a vast swath of our economy that affects every American’s life matched with court decisions defending the law which lay the groundwork for vast expansions of government control into other areas of our lives.
He has not shown one sign of remorse for the power he has bequeathed to Trump to abuse.
And abuse it he will. There, Biden has laid the path for Trump as well. When Biden launched his massive loan forgiveness effort, it was based on a deliberate misreading of the laws Biden claimed authorized it. For that reason, the Supreme Court nullified his first and largest effort, but Biden trundled on, acting quicker than courts could react. In the end he handed out $180 billion to five million people who tend to support Democrats despite the fact that they have higher incomes than the average American — spending a fortune without any legislation from Congress, which the Constitution has given the power of the purse.
Biden warns of “oligarchs” who aren’t paying their fair share. When Trump offers to hand them hundreds of billions of dollars, ignoring Congress and the courts, what will Democrats say? It wasn’t so bad when we did it? When we skirted the law to hand out billions, we gave it to more deserving people?
And this is what is so infuriating about Biden’s self-serving speech in which he ludicrously compares himself to Dwight Eisenhower: Trump did not just happen. The “normal” politicians, who were supposed to be serving us, were serving themselves. As a result they paved the way for the depredations to come.
Biden ended his speech warning that it is now the public’s turn “to stand guard.” If you’re worried about Donald Trump, you should have started standing guard long before Donald Trump entered the White House. Biden sure wasn’t.
This story was originally published January 16, 2025 at 3:33 PM with the headline "Joe Biden hypocritically warns America in his farewell about Trump’s abuses of power | Opinion."
