How Biden Put Republicans On Defense, And 4 Other Takeaways From The 2024 SOTU

Biden came out swinging in his last speech to a joint session of Congress before the 2024 election.

In a sharp and combative speech, President Joe Biden used his annual State of the Union address to Congress to effectively kick-start the general election and go on the attack against his presumptive opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Biden threw intense partisan elbows at Republicans throughout his speech, sparring with GOP lawmakers from the podium when they jeered him. But Biden aimed most directly at Trump — who he referred to only as “my predecessor” — criticizing the policies he’d enacted as president and his inflammatory statements on the campaign trail.

Presidents have historically shied away from such political displays during past State of the Union addresses, but this moment is different. No president has faced his predecessor in a re-election match since 1892, before the State of the Union was delivered in person.

“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today,” Biden said Thursday. “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.”

Biden went on to deliver what sounded more like a convention acceptance speech than a State of the Union. There was the usual laundry list of policy proposals and shout-outs to visitors emblematic of an important administration policy or party faction. But what stood out in this speech was how it laid out the stakes for the election — how, to Biden, Trump is as much a foe of the United States of America as any foreign adversary.