President Biden is set to deliver his farewell address to the nation Wednesday evening as he closes out four years in the White House.
Biden will deliver the address at 8 p.m. ET from the Oval Office, having earlier Wednesday published a farewell letter to the country.
‘Four years ago, we stood in a winter of peril and a winter of possibilities. We were in the grip of the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,’ Biden wrote.
‘But we came together as Americans, and we braved through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous, and more secure.’
Biden will officially exit the Oval Office on Jan. 20, when President-elect Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president around noon that day.
Biden has spent more than 50 years in public office, making his mark on the national map in 1972, President Richard Nixon’s landslide re-election year, when he beat a Republican incumbent in a long-shot Senate race in Delaware at the age of 29.
‘I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. And, that’s still the case,’ he added in his farewell letter.
‘America is an idea stronger than any army and larger than any ocean. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world. That idea is 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. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.’
Biden served 36 years in the U.S. Senate, one of the longest Senate careers in the chamber’s history, before joining former President Barack Obama’s ticket during the 2008 election and serving as vice president for eight years.
The 46th president defeated Trump during the 2020 election, and was set to square up against him again last year, but abruptly dropped out of the presidential race as concerns surrounding his mental acuity mounted. Vice President Kamala Harris was soon quickly endorsed by Biden and other high-profile Democrats to take up the mantle as the party’s presidential nominee, but lost the election as Trump swept all seven battleground states.
Biden has been an outspoken and repeated critic of Trump’s, calling him a ‘genuine threat to this nation,’ but vowed to ensure a peaceful transfer of power and that ‘of course’ he will attend Trump’s inauguration.
Ahead of his final address to America, Biden also delivered a foreign policy-focused farewell address at the State Department on Monday.
‘The United States is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago,’ Biden said in his final foreign policy speech Monday.
‘America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker,’ he added.