Former President Joe Biden stood before a South Carolina crowd on Friday and President Donald Trump took aim at his State of the Union address.
“Are they still talking?” Biden asked with a smile.
The quote from Trump’s Tuesday night speech ran for a record length of 1 hour and 47 minutes, Biden’s mildest criticism of the president.
During his roughly 20-minute remarks, Biden accused Trump of having a “weird obsession with Barack Obama” and conspiring to “steal the election” by putting up roadblocks to midterm voting. Then he simply said, “There’s 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 lifetime achievement. Biden paid tribute to the southern state that gave him a key presidential primary victory six years ago, putting him on track to claim the White House in 2020. The address was Biden’s rare public address since he left office last year.
Biden grew weary as he spoke about a surge in immigration agents in Minnesota that led to the fatal shootings of two US citizens, Renee Goode and Alex Pretty.
“My friends, I cannot sugarcoat this,” Biden said. “These are dark days.”
And he blasted Trump for ignoring the violent events that took place in Minnesota during the State of the Union.
“He also offers a word of comfort to the families of Renee Goode, Alex Pretty who was killed by ICE in Minnesota — killed by ICE in Minnesota,” Biden said, misspelling Pretty’s last name. “He wouldn’t give a word of support, not even acknowledge Epstein’s victims sitting in front of him. He never acknowledged them the whole time.”
Before the 2024 election, Biden chose the state as the first to vote in the Democratic primary. Now, before 2028, South Carolina is trying to hold onto that spot. While Biden didn’t explicitly call on party leaders to stick with South Carolina, he made his strength as a political prognosticator.
“I knew if I won the nomination, I would win the presidency, because Bill Clinton and Barack Obama knew before me: South Carolina would elect the president,” Biden said. “No kidding, folks, when it matters, you’re with me.”
In 2020, Biden limped into the South Carolina primary after suffering dramatic losses in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He finished second in Nevada — away from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. – Before winning South Carolina. His decisive victory in a state with a majority of black voters proved he could appeal to a critical Democratic voting bloc, and that cleared the field. Other Democrats quickly dropped out of the race and lined up to support Biden.
Biden left the White House last year with a tarnished reputation within his own party, seeking a second term amid concerns about his age and questions about whether he had suffered cognitive decline. Biden bowed out late in the election, giving then-Vice President Kamala Harris just 108 days to make her case to the public.
Now, a year into Trump’s second presidency, Biden is back to highlight the current president’s low scores with voters, and the Republican will pick up where he left off during his tenure.
Biden touted his own victories in office — including his own actions to take on Big Pharma, cap insulin costs and build job growth. He accused Trump of relegating the country’s standing on the world stage and touted the job growth and crime drop during his own tenure.
Trump won the 2024 election in part because of voter dissatisfaction with border security. Under Biden, immigration has soared and tens of thousands of immigrants have been forced into the nation’s interior major cities to compete for public resources.
Biden recalibrated and tried to negotiate a bipartisan immigration deal with Congress, but that failed. By the time he enacted more immigration restrictions, Biden was fueling discontent within his own party.
Trump has repeatedly railed against Biden’s stance on immigration, accusing him of favoring open borders. Today, Trump’s deportation operations are falling out of favor with Americans. In a recent NBC News poll, 60% of those surveyed in the week following Pretty’s death either somewhat or strongly disapproved of Trump’s actions on border security and immigration.
On Friday, Biden was critical of his handling of the issue.
“Even though Covid has driven immigration to record levels around the world, the day I left office, border crossings in the United States were lower than the day I entered office inherited by Trump,” Biden said. “That’s just the truth.”
