Joe Biden Mumbles Through Brief Farewell Address Taking Shots at Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg

Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP

Joe Biden delivered a speech from the Oval Office on Wednesday night that was billed as his ‘farewell address’ to the nation in the waning days of his presidency. In reality, he mumbled through much of the truncated remarks that doubled as an opportunity to warn against what he called “an oligarchy… taking shape in America” as a byproduct of the “tech-industrial complex.” 

On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by political commentators Ana Kasparian and Kevin Madden to discuss the content of the speech and why it is being billed as one of the most underwhelming in modern history.

The Address

Biden is forgoing the outgoing press conference presidents traditionally give before leaving office, but he did appear in primetime one last time with a 17-minute speech that aired across networks late Wednesday.

After taking credit for developing the framework of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and ticking through what he views as his administration’s achievements, the 82 year old largely used his time to “warn the country of some things that give me great concern.”

Chief among said concerns? The power and influence of tech titans like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

BIDEN: …In my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern… And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.

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…

And then came the hand-wringing over “disinformation” and what seemed to be a shot at Zuckerberg for ending Meta’s third-party fact-checking program across platforms.

BIDEN: …[In] his farewell address, President [Dwight] Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about, and I quote, “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,” end of quote. Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.

Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power…

The commander-in-chief’s delivery was halting and garbled and the official transcript released by the White House shows plenty of miscues despite the fact that he was reading from a teleprompter. 

The Hypocrisy

All of this led politicos and commentators to call the farewell speech one of the worst in history. Madden, who served as a senior advisor to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said the entire thing felt half-baked and hypocritical. “It seemed like it was mailed in by not only Biden but the speechwriting staff of the White House,” he noted. “It was a bit of a microcosm of the Biden presidency in that… it quickly descended into incoherence… that was matched with a lot of hypocrisy.”

The hypocrisy, in his view, had to do with who Biden chose to target. “The idea of delivering this message about how America is being controlled by this wealthy oligarchy, one week after you just hung a [Presidential Medal of Freedom] medal around [billionaire megadonor] George Soros’ neck in the White House,” Madden added. “Who thought it was a good idea to push that given the optics and the pageantry of the last week?”

Kasparian, the host and executive producer of The Young Turks, has found herself at odds with the Democrat Party in recent years and admitted she struggled to listen to the president despite being sympathetic to his message. “I agree with the message that Biden was trying to put out there in this speech, which I also agree I had a difficult time getting through,” she shared. “It was kind of boring for me, so I got through maybe 25 percent.”

While she believes Biden’s take on “corporate rule in America and money in politics in America” was “an accurate message,” she agreed it lacked self-awareness. “Money in politics has corrupted both political parties and for the Democrats to pretend as though they’re totally innocent of this is ridiculous to me – especially considering what we experienced in the last election cycle,” Kasparian explained. “I mean, Kamala Harris raised far more money than the Trump campaign did, and, in fact, she raised far more dark money than the Trump campaign did. And then she moved forward in essentially squandering all of that money.”

You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kasparian and Madden by tuning in to episode 984 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.