In-Your-Face Biden takes on Trump and his own doubters

This wasn’t Old Man Joe. This was Powerful Joe. This was Angry Joe. This was Loud Joe. This was Game On Joe.

In an in-your-face State of the Union address during the election year, President Biden delivered one of the most confrontational speeches any president has ever delivered from the House of Representatives podium, met by equally heated bickering from his Republican opponents.

It was an extraordinary spectacle that illustrated the raw nature of modern American politics, a spectacle that made clear how far Washington has come since the days of neat presidential speeches aimed at the history books. Mr. Biden repeatedly attacked his opponent during the fall elections and the opposition lawmakers who sat before him. Republicans jeered and booed. The Democrats chanted, “Four more years,” as if it were a campaign rally.

But that was the point. Frustrated by all the talk about his age and determined to dispel voters’ doubts, the 81-year-old Biden used the most prominent platform of this election year, with likely the largest television and Internet audiences he will address before November, to test his staying power , his vitality, his ability and, yes, his offense. Defiant and feisty, he abandoned the conventions of the format to take on former President Donald J. Trump directly and tried to turn the election into a referendum on his predecessor rather than himself.

Although he did not use Mr. Trump’s name, Mr. Biden referred to “my predecessor” 13 times and unapologetically denounced “you in this room” for being the former president’s lackeys through security aid to Ukraine and a bipartisan border deal to for political reasons. . Every time they honked or interrupted, he gave as good as he got, mocking their points and challenging them to pass important legislation.

He was so excited, so eager to get started, that he rolled right over House Speaker Mike Johnson and opened his speech without giving the neophyte Republican leader the traditional introduction of “high privilege and manifest honor.” have it made. Mr. Biden shouted his words, clearly intending to use volume to show strength. The prepared text contained 80 exclamation points and he certainly added more as he went along.

“My pastor and some of you here are trying to bury the truth about January 6!” he stated about the 2021 attack on the Capitol, instigated by Mr. Trump.

“We’ve stopped you 50 times and we’ll stop you again!” he vowed on Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“My God, what other freedom would you deprive yourself of?” he demanded after condemning the overturning of Roe v. Wade by Trump-appointed judges.

If the subtext of the 68-minute speech was intended to calm Democrats and independents concerned that he is too old to seek another term, Mr. Biden explicitly addressed the issue at the end, referring to “other people my age,” which Mr. Biden was referring to. Trump, who is 77 and also has moments of public confusion and memory loss.

“My fellow Americans, the problem facing our nation is not how old we are, but how old our ideas are,” Mr. Biden said. “Hate, anger, revenge and retaliation are the oldest ideas. But you can’t lead America with age-old ideas that will only set us back. To lead America, the land of opportunity, you need a vision of the future and what can and should be done.”

The president’s speech seemed to get under Mr. Trump’s skin. “That may be the angriest, least compassionate and worst State of the Union speech ever given.” Mr Trump wrote this on his social media site afterwards, including his own exclamation mark. “It was a shame for our country!”

For many watching, the speech likely gave a different impression of Mr. Biden than he sometimes leaves in public appearances, where he can appear weak and hesitant. While he garbled his lines at points and paused his speech to cough a few times, he came across as much more commanding and energetic, which reassured some of his supporters.

More than most presidents on such occasions, he deviated from the prepared text on the teleprompter to ad-lib lines — sometimes curiously, as when he talked about Snickers bars “with 10 percent less Snickers in them,” and other times aggressively, like when he responded to the loudest members of the crowd.

At one point, Mr. Biden nearly had a repeat of last year’s State of the Union address, when he turned on Republicans who protested his claims about their plans to undermine Social Security. “Republicans can cut Social Security and give more tax breaks to the rich,” he said this time, only to be interrupted by Republican lawmakers with boos and jeers.

“You don’t want another $2 trillion tax cut?” he said with a smile on his face. “I actually thought that was your plan. Well, that’s good to hear.”

At another point, invoking the bipartisan border deal rejected by Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted about the case of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who authorities say was killed last month by a Venezuelan migrant who entered the country illegally. “Say her name!” she screamed.

Ms. Greene, the proud Georgia Republican who embraced QAnon conspiracy theories, showed up wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and a “Say Her Name” T-shirt. Mr. Biden called her bluff and interrupted his speech by holding up a “Say her name” button that had been given to him. He continued to say Mrs. Riley’s name, although he messed up by calling her “Lincoln” instead of “Laeken.”

He added that “my heart goes out” to her family, but asked “how many thousands” had been killed by people living legally in the United States and argued that passing the border bill would reduce the number of illegal crossings. “Make sure this bill gets done,” he told Republicans. “We must act now.”

Mr. Biden, who began attending State of the Union addresses as a young senator in the early 1970s, clearly felt comfortable and relished the return to Capitol Hill. He took his time entering the chamber, shaking hands and chatting with lawmakers, even making a playful face at Ms. Greene when he saw her hat. Likewise, he stuck around long after the speech, reliving the best moments with the Democrats surrounding him on the floor.

Unleashed and unyielding, Mr Biden appeared to relish the confrontation. While he bragged about his achievements and recited the usual litany of policy pronouncements, as presidents are wont to do, he did not aim for lofty rhetorical flourishes.

He only mentioned his “unity agenda” in passing in a speech that was virtually unity-free. Instead, he gave the impression of a candidate eager for a fight, coming across as more combative than even the typically belligerent Trump in the same setting four years ago.

“We will not walk away,” Mr. Biden said early in his speech. “We will not bow down. I will not bow.”

At that time he spoke specifically about the fight against Russia. But he also seemed to mean the battle for his own presidency.