US President Joe Biden has warned that the “soul of America” is still at stake, as he prepared to deliver his farewell address to the nation before the return of Donald Trump.
The 82-year-old Democrat will make a primetime speech from the Oval Office of the White House in which Biden is expected to tout the legacy of his single term in power.
Ahead of the address at 8:00 pm (0100 GMT Thursday) Biden also released a letter to the American people which delivered an implicit swipe at Republican Trump.
“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,” Biden said in the letter.
“History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. We just have to keep the faith and remember who we are,” he said.
Biden said the United States was stronger than four years ago, when it “stood in a winter of peril” after Trump’s chaotic first term, the Covid pandemic and what he called “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Biden was sworn in just days after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn his election loss.
He did not mention Trump by name, but his words clearly echoed previous speeches in which he said he decided to run in the 2020 election because America’s “soul” was at risk from Trump and his supporters.
