Biden bids farewell with Oval Office address

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden gives his farewell address from the Oval Office Wednesday evening, five days before he ends his term and President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated.

In a letter released Wednesday morning, Biden reflected on how his administration began in the shadows of COVID-19 and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters intent on overturning the result of the 2020 election that Biden won.

“Four years ago, we stood in a winter of peril and a winter of possibilities,” he said in the letter. “But we came together as Americans, and we braved through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous, and more secure.”

The president’s farewell address comes a day after Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted Trump on charges of illegally trying to cling to power after the 2020 election, released his final report. Smith’s report said that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict the president-elect in a trial, had his 2024 election victory not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and attacked the special counsel’s work as politically motivated.

Biden’s speech follows remarks he made Monday at the U.S. State Department defending his foreign policy record and will be his fifth and final formal address from the Oval Office. In his previous Oval Office address six months ago, Biden explained his decision to step aside and endorse his vice president, Kamala Harris, to run against Trump in the 2024 election.

Biden reflected on the “battle for the soul of America” framework that he campaigned on in 2020 when he won against Trump.

“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake,” Biden wrote, arguing that is still the case and that America is an idea based on the belief that “we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“We’ve never fully lived up to this sacred idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either,” he said. “And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.”

Biden’s legacy

Biden is leaving office with a 39% approval rating, according to Gallup. He has been using the final weeks of his administration to cement his legacy.

Thomas Schwartz, presidential historian from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, said that Biden’s legacy will be affected by how Trump governs in the next four years.

“If Trump ends up being a disaster … either ushering economic chaos, or if there's more world chaos from conflicts, Biden will be remembered more favorably,” he told VOA. “If Trump really proves to be as dangerous to democratic norms as Biden and the Democrats suggested, then I think he may be seen as very prophetic.”

Conversely, by inheriting a strong economy and a winding down of U.S. foreign entanglements, Trump has the potential to become a president in the caliber of Ronald Reagan, Schwartz said. In which case Biden will be noted by historians for his legislative achievements but “won’t be remembered as fondly.”

The White House also released an extensive fact sheet detailing the Biden-Harris administration’s achievements domestically and abroad.

The sheet highlighted “historic” economic progress that added 16.6 million jobs, grew the GDP by 12.6% and raised median household wealth by 37%. It underscored investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and semiconductors through Biden’s signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act.

The White House argued that through targeted relief and fair taxation, the Biden administration rebuilt a “stronger, fairer economy,” creating opportunity from the bottom up.

On the foreign policy front, the administration insists it is leaving the incoming Trump administration with a “very strong hand to play.”

"We're leaving an America with more friends and stronger alliances, whose adversaries are weaker and under pressure," the president said in his foreign policy address Monday, "an America that once again is leading, uniting countries, setting the agenda, bringing others together behind our plans and visions."

The president again defended his decision to withdraw the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2021. Republicans and some Democrats have criticized the manner with which Biden ended America's longest war as chaotic, costing the lives of 13 service members and dozens of Afghan civilians in a terrorist attack in Kabul.

Biden said in the letter it has been "the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years."

“Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States," he added. "I have given my heart and my soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people.”

Asked about his post-presidency role, Biden last week said, “I’m not going to be out of sight or out of mind.”