Biden seizes on Trump’s sinking favorability in a combative speech in South Carolina

Former President Joe Biden stood before a South Carolina crowd Friday and took aim at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

“Is he still talking?” » Biden asked with a laugh.

The reference to Trump’s speech Tuesday night, which lasted a record 1 hour and 47 minutes, would be Biden’s mildest criticism of the president.

During his roughly 20-minute remarks, Biden accused Trump of having a “strange obsession with Barack Obama” and of plotting to “steal the election” by trying to erect obstacles to midterm voting. He then simply stated that there was “something wrong with this guy.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden spoke Friday in Columbia, South Carolina, where party leaders and donors honored his life’s work. Biden paid tribute to the Southern state that six years earlier gave him a crucial victory in the presidential primary, putting him on track to claim the White House in 2020. The speech was a rare public address by Biden since he left office last year.

Biden grew glum as he spoke about the surge of immigration agents in Minnesota that led to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“Folks, I can’t sugarcoat this,” Biden said. “These are dark days.”

And he criticized Trump for ignoring these violent events in Minnesota during the State of the Union.

“He doesn’t mention Renee Good, Alex Pretti who were killed by ICE in Minnesota – in Minnesota by ICE – even offer a word of comfort to their families,” Biden said, appearing to mispronounce Pretti’s last name. “He offers not a word of support, or even acknowledgment, to the Epstein victims sitting before him. In all this time, he has never acknowledged them.”

Ahead of the 2024 election, Biden chose the state to become the first to vote in a Democratic primary. Now, before 2028, South Carolina is trying to hold on to that spot. Although Biden did not explicitly call on party leaders to stick with South Carolina, he made the case for his strength as a political prognosticator.

“I knew that if I won the nomination, I would win the presidency, because I knew what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama knew before me: South Carolina chooses presidents,” Biden said. “It’s not a joke, friends. When it mattered, you were there for me.”

In 2020, Biden limped into the South Carolina primary after suffering dramatic defeats in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He finished second in Nevada — far behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. – before winning South Carolina. His decisive victory in a state with a majority black electorate proved he could appeal to a critical Democratic voting bloc, and it cleared the field. Other Democrats quickly withdrew from the race and lined up to support Biden.

Biden left the White House last year with a tarnished reputation within his own party, after seeking a second term amid concerns about his age and questions about whether he was suffering from cognitive decline. Biden withdrew late in the election, giving then-Vice President Kamala Harris just 108 days to make his case to the public.

Now, a year into Trump’s second presidency, Biden was back to highlight the current president’s poor ratings with voters and characterize the Republican’s tenure as a step backwards from what he left behind.

Biden ticked off his own victories in office — including his own actions to take on big pharma, like capping the cost of insulin and creating jobs. He accused Trump of lowering the country’s stature on the world stage and touted job growth and a drop in crime during his own term.

Trump won the 2024 election in part because of voters’ dissatisfaction with border security. Under Biden, immigration increased and tens of thousands of migrants were bused to major cities in the country’s interior, competing for public resources.

Biden recalibrated and attempted to negotiate a bipartisan immigration deal with Congress, but it was scuttled. As he enacted more immigration restrictions, discontent brewed within Biden’s own party.

Trump has repeatedly denounced Biden’s stance on immigration, accusing him of having open borders. Today, it is Trump’s deportation operations that are losing favor with Americans. In a recent NBC News poll, 60% of people surveyed in the week after Pretti’s death somewhat or strongly disapproved of Trump’s actions on border security and immigration.

On Friday, Biden appeared to respond to criticism of his own handling of the issue.

“Despite the fact that Covid pushed migration to record levels around the world, the day I left office, border crossings into the United States were fewer than the day I entered the office I inherited from Trump,” Biden said. “It’s just a fact.”