Rachel Maddow had anticipated that President Joe Biden’s farewell address may have been more somber, perhaps a “warning” of what’s to come in the years ahead.
But speaking on MSNBC with colleagues Chris Hayes, Joy Reid, Jen Psaki and Alex Wagner Wednesday evening to analyze the 20-minutes speech just as it wrapped, Maddow admitted that she “did not expect it to be this stark.”
Reacting to the president warning of a looming oligarchy and a “dangerous concentration of power” among America’s ultra-wealthy, the news host said while reading direct quotes from his address that Biden’s message “put a chill down my spine.”
“I think he’s correct, and I’m glad he took this time to say it,” she added.
Watch the full segment below:
“I had wondered, OK, well, they’re not taking a lot of time in this speech. They have spelled out the list of accomplishments in writing ahead of this speech. So maybe this speech is going to be for something else. Maybe this is going to be a warning. I did not expect it to be this stark,” Maddow said at the top of Wednesday night’s segment. “He said, ‘Tonight, there is an oligarchy taking shape in America; dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people; a tech-industrial complex that poses real dangers.’
“He talked about a tide of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power — not just saying misinformation and disinformation are bad on their won, but why are they there? They are there to enable the abuse of power,” Maddow continued. “He talked about the free press crumbling, which put a shiver down my spine, and then talked about how truth is being sacrificed for lies for the purposes of power and profit.”
The journalist said that the address and his warning was “important” because for the most part, Biden decided “not to brag on the way out about what he did — he did a little of that. But really, he’s taken this last moment to say, ‘Here is what we’ve got right now, and this is why. This is not just dangerous because it doesn’t sound American, it’s dangerous because this is what they’re doing to you with this oligarchy, with this concentration of power and with what they’re doing with the press and the truth.’”
“That is stark and sober and, like I said, it put a chill down my spine,” she concluded. “I think he’s correct, and I’m glad he took this time to say it.”
Biden warned of a looming “oligarchy” and a “dangerous concentration of power” in the hands of a few wealthy people that he said is threatening America’s democracy, in his farewell address on Wednesday.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America, extreme wealth, power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, basic rights, freedoms and a fair shot for everyone,” he said. “We see the consequences all across America, and we’ve seen it before, more than a century ago, that the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trust. They didn’t punish the wealthy. Just made the wealthy pay and play by the rules everybody else had.”
The outgoing president’s forceful words were an ominous endcap to his administration, which will give way next week to a Trump presidency already rife with billionaire influence from the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison and other unelected tech and financial titans who wield outsized power.
Watch MSNBC’s full analysis in the video above.
