President Biden's farewell address lasted 17 minutes and included some sour grapes about “an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Here’s part of what Biden said:
President Biden: 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.
But taxpayer-funded PBS didn’t see any hyperbole in its special coverage of Biden’s speech, only fair warnings about the incoming Trump administration. PBS was worse than ABC, CBS, or NBC in the speech aftermath. The network’s most biased reporter, Laura Barron-Lopez, seemed to agree with Biden on how the current president has been a victim of “lies and disinformation.”
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: So Laura, one of the things we heard him say, he warned of a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few wealthy people. He warned of an oligarchy taking shape in this country. What other themes and remarks stood out to you?
Laura Barron-Lopez: ....Very clear warnings that he's making at what he still sees as a threat posed by the incoming president Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has forecasted about what he would do to exert his control and try to expand presidential powers.
Congressional reporter Lisa Desjardins chimed in with fulsome praise for Bidenomics and mockery of Trump.
Lisa Desjardins: ….He could have talked a lot more at length about his own accomplishments -- for example, we just got an incredible jobs report, his jobs record is something that I think economists will be talking about for years. That’s not where his mind is. His mind is you all are reporting is instead on the oligarch taking power which he says threatening freedoms and the phrase he repeated again and again, a fair shot for people. It was also interesting to me, someone who was privileged enough to cover both his campaign and now President Trump's campaign, we talk a lot about President Trump in terms of the 1980s being formational for him, but I think he goes back to an even older time, the 1880s really with all his imperialism and populism. And we heard the phrase robber barons that President Biden is talking about. He's saying that there are dangers that have been in this country before oligarchs that we are now returning to and he wants people to pay attention.
Bennett did bring up how America has a lower opinion of Biden than the partisans at PBS seem to have.
Bennett: A majority of Americans, poll after poll have shown this, give President Biden low favorability ratings. They disapprove of how he has conducted himself in office. How does the White House reconcile that disconnect, that gap between what the White House views as their achievements and that perception among a majority of Americans?
Barron-Lopez made excuses for Biden: It was all conservative disinformation and lies! In other words, the left’s power to censor is slipping away, with decisions by Meta and X enabling conservatives to speak more freely online.
Barron-Lopez: ….we heard some of the president's response to that tonight, when he specifically talked about social media giving up on fact-checking and he talked about the level of disinformation and the tech-industrial, across the tech-industrial complex, which is what he called it….they ultimately have blamed some of that on this new information environment that the country is in, on lies spread across, easily across social media, and the responsibility that this president believes the people in charge of those social media companies believe have in trying to make sure that facts are what reach the public and not lies and disinformation….
Desjardins made a striking observation that shouldn’t get lost when talking about Biden’s legacy.
Desjardins: I have been texting with a lot of Democrats, elected lawmakers at the Capitol, I can't find one yet who was watching the speech….
A partial transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS News Special Coverage
1/15/25
8:19:21 p.m. (ET)
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: So Laura, one of the things we heard him say, he warned of a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few wealthy people. He warned of an oligarchy taking shape in this country. What other themes and remarks stood out to you?
Laura Barron-Lopez: ....He said that it may take time for the American public to fully feel the effect of the things that he accomplished in his one term. But the majority of this speech was about bigger themes, about what he still sees as a threat to democracy, and questions of separation of power, of checks and balance. The fact that he said that no president is immune from crimes committed while in office and that a president's power is not absolute. Very clear warnings that he's making at what he still sees as a threat posed by the incoming president Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has forecasted about what he would do to exert his control and try to expand presidential powers.
Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: ....What did you take away from some of his warnings about, as Laura was mentioning, respecting democratic institutions?
Lisa Desjardins: Well, this is a man who’s had a truly remarkable, in our history, political career. I covered just a small part of that career, 20 years, so that’s how long he's been in office. He ran for office 13 different times as a politician. So he’s taking a long view here. He knows that this is yet another pivot point….this was a more sort of a more tangible speech about what he sees are the direct and specific problems right now. He could have talked a lot more at length about his own accomplishments -- for example, we just got an incredible jobs report, his jobs record is something that I think economists will be talking about for years. That’s not where his mind is. His mind is you all are reporting is instead on the oligarch taking power and threatening freedoms and the phrase he repeated again and again a fair shot for people. It was also interesting to me someone who was privileged enough to cover his campaign and now President Trump's campaign. We talk a lot about President Trump of the 1980s being formational for him, but I think he goes back to an even older time, the 1880s with all his imperialism and populism. And we heard the phrase robber barons that President Biden is talking about. He's saying that there are dangers that have been in this country before oligarchs that we are now returning to and he wants people to pay attention.
Bennett: And Laura Barron-Lopez, a majority of Americans, poll after poll have shown this, give President Biden low favorability ratings. They disapprove of how he has conducted himself in office. How does the White House reconcile that disconnect that gap between what the White House views as their achievements and that perception among a majority of Americans?
Barron-Lopez: Well I think Geoff, that we heard some of the president's response to that tonight, when he specifically talked about social media giving up on fact-checking and he talked about the level of disinformation and the tech-industrial, across the tech-industrial complex, which is what he called it. That is something that this White House, that Democrats, that aides inside the White House, have vented a lot about throughout the presidency, that essentially despite the fact that as though he did a lot to bring the country back from the COVID-19 pandemic, despite statistics and data showing that the economy is rebounding, that they feel as though he hasn’t gotten credit for that or the job creation as a result of the infrastructure bill and new climate change actions that he’s implemented. And so they ultimately have blamed some of that on this new information environment that the country is in, on lies spread across, easily across social media, and the responsibility that this president believes the people in charge of those social media companies believe have in trying to make sure that facts are what reach the public and not lies and disinformation. Also, a lot of White House aides have often said what the president said tonight which is that again they think that ultimately, Americans will look back on President Biden’s time in office very differently than they view it right now in the current moment. And potentially very similar to the way Americans viewed some of President Obama's actions such as the Affordable Care Act. They believe that ultimately the public will credit him for some of the actions that he took and that it will take time as the president said tonight, and that's how they reconcile it, Geoff. But ultimately, right now, leaving office, you're right. His polling numbers do not look very good and we have a poll, a recent poll, out today from PBS News, Maris, and NPR and in it, it shows that the president’s disapproval rating is at 50% and his approval rating is at 42% currently, Geoff."
Nawaz: Lisa, while we know he’s been leading the nation for four years, he’s also been leading his party. What do your Democratic sources tell you about this moment?
Desjardins: I have been texting with a lot of Democrats, elected lawmakers at the Capitol, I can't find one yet who was watching the speech. And in fact as we talk now, as he talked about the future of the country, what are Democrats doing? A number of them are at Democratic National Committee headquarters for a forum for the candidates who wants to lead the party. So, Biden is talking about his legacy but the party is moving on to someone else.
