Joe Biden gave his final TV sitdown interview to MSNBC‘s Lawrence O’Donnell this evening, as the outgoing president reflected on his accomplishments, including the recent ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas.
But with polls showing him leaving with a low approval ratings, Biden also acknowledged political shortcomings.
O’Donnell asked him, “You said it was stupid, as a joke, that you didn’t sign the checks that went out to people from your administration when you were giving Covid help after Donald Trump put his name on the checks that went out during his administration… Did it cross your mind to put your name on the checks?”
Biden said, “The mistake we made was, I think I made, was not getting our allies to acknowledge that the Democrats did this.”
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He added, “I’m not a very good huckster. I mean, and that — it wasn’t a stupid thing for him to do. It helped him a lot. And it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them.
“…Ironically, I almost spent too much time on the policy and not enough time on the politics, because, I mean, you have some senators in Congress, Democratic senators in Congress saying, ‘Well, you know, Joe Biden did this.’ Let people know who was responsible for this happening. But it just seems, I know it sounds so stupid to say it, almost bad taste.”
In his farewell speech from the Oval Office on Wednesday, Biden warned that an “oligarchy is taking shape in America,” specifically warning of a “tech industrial complex” in which Silicon Valley billionaires are wielding outsize influences over all facets of society.
Biden told O’Donnell that the danger was that average Americans will find themselves without a champion.
Biden said, “Look, if the decision is made that the multibillionaires, the super, super wealthy, the wealthiest people in the world, begin to control all the apparatuses, from the media to the economy, then who do I get to fight back for me?
“I think everybody deserves just a shot, not a guarantee, just a shot. How the hell can you make it in society today if you don’t have access to an education, you don’t have access to adequate health care, you don’t have access to the opportunity to have a job that you can handle where you can make ends meet?”
As he has before, the president also said that he was concerned “about how fragile democracy is.”
“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. Where unrelated to any particular leader.”
He added that “the thing that keeps it on track are the guardrails. 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 I don’t know, they seem to just be chipping away at all those elements.”
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