Former President Joe Biden condemned the Trump administration while addressing the National Bar Association’s 100th annual gala.
“Not since those tumultuous days in 1960s has this fight been so existential to who we are as a nation, with marginalized groups so dramatically under attack,” Biden said, referring to civil rights. “My friends, we need to face the hard truth of this administration, and that it has been to ease all the gains we’ve made in my administration. To erase history rather than making it. To erase fairness, equality, to erase justice itself. And that’s not hyperbole. That’s a fact.”
The former president added that the nation is seeing a “rollback of basic freedoms, every erosion of long-standing, established precedent,” going on to demand that court systems continue taking action against Trump’s policies. “Judges matter, courts matter, the law matters and the Constitution matters. I think a lot of Americans are starting to realize that under the pressure under now with this guy we have as president,” Biden said.
President Trump “seems to be doing his best to dismantle the Constitution,” he added. “These are dark days, but you’re all here for the same reason I left that prestigious law firm to go to the defender’s office years ago. It’s because our future is literally on the line and we must be unapologetic of fighting for the future.”
Biden slurred several times during the speech and raised his voice at other moments. He was later presented with the organization’s C. Francis Stradford Award, the highest honor from the National Bar Association.
