Joe Biden Is Back-ish

In his first extensive speech since leaving office, former President Joe Biden relayed some childhood anecdotes and self-effacing jokes about his age (“As a United States senator 400 years ago”) and railed at Donald Trump, without actually mentioning his name, for his sweeping cuts to the Social Security Administration. “They are certainly breaking things. They are shooting first and aiming later.” Biden said.

At one point during the keynote speech to a conference of lawyers and disability advocates in Chicago on Tuesday, Biden described his family’s move from Scranton, Pennsylvania to Wilmington, Delaware when he was in the fourth grade as a pivotal moment in his political development: “I remember pulling into the parking lot and I had never seen hardly any Black people in Scranton at the time. I remember seeing kids going by, at the time called colored kids, on the bus going by. They never turned right to go to Claremont high school and I wondered why, I asked my mom, why?” To which his mother explained the segregation in Delaware barred them from going to public school with white students. “That sparked my sense of outrage as a kid.”

It was this childhood memory that MAGA supporters latched onto when Trump posted a 14-second clip on Truth Social, piling on Biden for using the term “colored kids.” MAGA influencer Nick Sortor shared the cut on X, adding, “The face of the Democrat party.” While others took the opportunity to revive calls of “Crooked Joe” and questions about his mental acuity.

In his speech, Biden said that he had left the Social Security Administration fully staffed and dedicated to customer service. Trump has promised that Social Security benefits would remain safe from cuts but, in his campaign to shrink the federal workforce, the program set out to reduce staff headcount by 12% in February with rushed, ill-explained changes leading to anxiety for remaining staff and beneficiaries alike. “People are being told incorrectly their benefits have ended,” Biden described in his speech. “People are overwhelming the phone lines, showing up at the local social security office tearful and frantic.”