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In his closing televised interview earlier than he leaves workplace and closes the e-book on greater than 5 a long time in American politics, President Joe Biden expressed concern concerning the state of America’s democracy and lamented his failure to promote his administration’s accomplishments in a method that would have helped him retain sufficient public approval to have gained a second time period within the White Home.
Chatting with MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell in a pre-taped interview that aired late Thursday, Biden stated his resolution to make use of his farewell handle to the nation to warn concerning the rise of a brand new “oligarchy” fueled by the fortunes of expertise barons was pushed by “a sense … of serious concern” over the state of American democracy.
“That sounds corny. But I mean, I really, really am concerned, because you’ve heard me say it 100 times, I really think we’re in an inflection point in history here … [when] things are going to change drastically [that] occurs every five or six generations. And it usually is generated by technology,” warned Biden. He emphasised what he’s most nervous about dropping “the guardrails” that hold democracy “on track.”
“There’s a Supreme Court that’s independent, but accountable. There is a Congress that you speak your mind, but you’re held accountable to basic standards. There’s a presidency that says you have really limited powers. I mean, you’re the top dog, but you can’t dictate everything and … they seem to just be chipping away at all those elements,” he stated.
Biden’s feedback adopted his final handle from the Oval Workplace simply over 24 hours earlier when he channeled President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 warning concerning the rise of a strong “military-industrial complex.” Biden supplied his personal warning to the American folks of a “tech industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country.” He additionally warned of latest age of “robber barons” and tech business “oligarchs” with large new affect in American politics.
Biden’s successor, President-elect Donald Trump, is ready to be sworn in Monday surrounded by among the richest males on the earth, together with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The forty sixth president defeated Trump 4 years in the past within the 2020 presidential election and has claimed he may have executed so once more had he not been compelled from the race after a disastrous efficiency towards Trump at their sole debate final June.
As a substitute, Biden ceded the Democratic ticket to Vice President Kamala Harris, who went on to be overwhelmed within the electoral school by Trump. regardless of a succession of felony charges towards him, together with federal charges stemming from his try and overturn his 2020 election loss.
The soon-to-be forty seventh president was capable of capitalize on a mix of excessive inflation and the dearth of credit score Biden and Harris got for the comparatively sturdy efficiency of the American economic system to persuade voters to return him to the publish they’d fired him from 4 years earlier.
Anecdotal studies revealed that Individuals felt the economic system was stronger below Trump, they usually credited Trump for stimulus checks despatched to them in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic — even when these checks had been issued below Biden — partly as a result of Trump had insisted on placing his title on the stimulus funds despatched out throughout his final yr in workplace.
Requested whether or not he regretted not partaking in the identical sort of self-promotion Trump did, Biden advised O’Donnell that the concept of placing his title on stimulus checks as Trump had executed “did cross my mind.”
However the outgoing president stated there was a deeper political failure at play than a set of checks.
“The mistake we made was, I think I made, was not getting our allies to acknowledge that the Democrats did this,” he stated.
Biden added that in hindsight, he’d “almost spent too much time on the policy, not enough time on the politics.”
“You have some senators in Congress, Democratic senators in Congress saying, ‘Well, you know, Joe Biden did this, and this is done by so and so and so and so, and this is the new, you know, built by the Democratic Party kind of thing, letting peopl know what was responsible for this happening,” stated Biden. “But it just seems — I know it sounds so stupid to say it — almost bad taste,” he added.
