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Topics: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, US News
After handing over the keys to the White House in January, Joe Biden gave his first public post presidency speech yesterday (15 April).
The 82-year-old took aim at current POTUS Donald Trump and Elon Musk for creating ‘needless pain and sleepless nights’.
Although, Biden didn’t actually mention the US President by name, instead referring to him as ‘this guy’ or ‘these guys’ – quite the difference to Trump frequently calling him out by name.
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He did hold somewhat back from the type of harsh criticism his successor may give him, but took more of a broad slam at his tenure so far.
The former president said that in ‘fewer than 100 days, this new administration has made so much… damage and so much destruction’ which he described as ‘breathtaking’.
"We can't go on like this as a divided nation, as divided as we are. Like I said, I've been doing this a long time. It's never been this divided," Biden said. "Granted, it's roughly 30 percent, but it's a 30 percent that has no heart."
It’s not quite clear what group of people that 30 percent comment referred to.
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Much of his roughly half-hour-long speech was focused on Social Security which he says Trump’s administration has ‘taken a hatchet to’.
And in response to this, the Social Security Administration pushed back using its official X account.
“Former President Joe Biden is lying to Americans,” the agency wrote.
During his introduction of Biden, Martin O'Malley, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, called out Trump and Musk for gutting ‘the Social Security Administration with a chainsaw’.
And he added the ‘big lie’ during Trump 2.0 was that ‘there's a massive zombie apocalypse of dead people' on the Social Security rolls.
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Biden also made a bit of a dig at DOGE’s (the Department of Government Efficiency which Musk works with) findings before being more serious again.
“By the way, those 300-year-old folks getting Social Security, I'd like to meet them,” he said. “Helluva thing man. I'm looking for longevity. Because it is hell when you turn 40 years old.”
With Musk have cut staffing at Social Security and referred to it as ‘the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time’, Biden said in his speech: “A Ponzi scheme — what the hell are they talking about? People earn these benefits.
“They paid into that benefit. They rely on that benefit. And no one, no one, no one should take it away."
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It’s said that at times it was ‘difficult’ to hear Biden, speaking in quiet and hushed tones as he didn’t include a defence of himself or his own administration despite Trump’s relentless verbal abuse.
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung criticised Biden for an ‘incoherent speech’ that showed he had a ‘feeble mind’.
"President Trump has repeatedly promised to protect Social Security and ensure higher take-home pay for seniors by ending the taxation of Social Security benefits. Anybody saying otherwise is either stupid or an all-out liar, or both in Biden’s case," Cheung said in a statement.