Remarks by President Biden at a Reception for the Democratic National Committee | Eastern North Carolina Now

Press Release:

Private Residence  •  Bethesda, Maryland  •  August 26, 2022

    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, thank you, thank you. (Applause.) Thank you. Please - please sit down.

    Hello, hello, hello. Honey, what's your name? Well, let me tell you something. Is that your daddy? He owes you big for having to sit here. (Laughter.) This has to be the most boring, boring thing in the world for a beautiful young woman to have to do. So, I don't know - what do you like best? Ice cream? What do you want? I mean, I - we got - we got to work something out, okay? Okay, because he owes you big.

    And by the way, I like your - hang on a second. I've been wearing Ray-Bans so long, since 100 years ago when I was a lifeguard for years. Everybody made fun of me. Now, it's very - folks, it's terrible, when you've been a United States senator for 36 years and Vice President for 8 years and a President, to be known for two things: Ray-Ban sunglasses and ice cream. (Laughter.) What a dull person. But at any rate - so, I like your glasses. Okay?

    All right. But he owes you big. You let me know, okay?

    Folks, thank you very much. And let me thank our host and hostess. And, look, this is a - our hosts are responsible, in no small part, for my standing here and being President. Because back in 2019, when it was "Joe who? What? How? What? Huh?" And you all helped out. And you helped out significantly. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I really mean it.

    Look, folks, there is a - to state the obvious, there's a lot going on, and it's taken a while for folks to catch up. And I do not - I don't mean that in a critical way.

    You know, when you think about it, when you got me elected the first time around, we had the - one of the highest unemployment rates in American history. We were in a situation where we were in significant debt. We had - well, there was - instead of dealing with the deficit, we were piling up the deficit. We were in a situation where we had only - only 2 million vaccines for the whole - for the entire country.

    We were, if you think about the things we were facing - and, in the process, people didn't know quite what to do. I think there is - I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that when you go through a period of such uncertainty where things that never happened really - not in our lifetime hadn't happened before - when you have, you know - you know, 100 million people dying - I mean, dying.

    Finding ourselves in a circumstance where everybody wondered whether there was a thing called global warming - nobody seems to doubt it right now. You see what's happening all around the world. Turn on the television every day, what do you see? You see flooding and fires.

    I have literally been in a helicopter with governors around the country, with FEMA - which I think we've done a hell of a job now. But, you know, more forests have burned and homes have gone down than all the land, the square mileage of all the property from New York to - all the way down to Virginia, because of the - New Jersey. I mean, it's gigantic. That's how much has been just laid to waste.

    And we're still playing around. We were still playing around. There were so many climate deniers that it was - you know, think about it. I mean, just a year ago, if we had this meeting, there would still be a lot of deniers who were saying, "No, no, no, it can't be - we can't afford to do anything about this. It's going to affect my this, that, or the other thing."

    And so, there's a lot that's happened. And a lot that's happened. But things are beginning to change a little bit. We're in a situation, in my view, where - I used to always tell Barack, that - when he'd get down, I'd say, "You know, Mr. President, a country will never be more optimistic than its president - a country will never be more optimistic than its president."

    We're at a point, in my view - and you've heard me say before - that we've reached an inflection point in world history. And we reach one of those every - anywhere from five to seven generations. Something fundamentally changes beyond the immediate leadership. So much is in flux. So much is changing - not all bad, but changing significantly.

    You have a circumstance where - when I met with Putin back in Geneva to talk about strategic security, he talked about how there wasn't much need for that. I said, "Well, you've got a country where the tundra in northern - in the eight - eight timezones you - you span, where it's literally burning." The permafrost is burning - not melting, burning. Burning. More methane is coming out of the ground, which is four to six times more dangerous than everything else that can pollute the air that's out there.

    So much is changing. China is in a circumstance where they're trying to figure out where they go, how they deal with where they go. And they're not quite sure. And Xi Jinping, who - I've spent more time with him than any other world leader. I've spent over 78 hours with him alone. And of that, 68 hours was in person with him over the last 12 years. That - he's not sure what to do. He got 1,400,000,000 people and wondering whether or not people are going to still -

    But what was his what was his advertising call? "Well, come invest in China. Yeah, I have - you got this gigantic population to sell to."

    Well, what's happening now? What's happening now - he's not at all so certain about the ability. The Chinese are very, very uncertain about their future. The Chinese people are uncertain about their future.

    My generic point is there's is a lot of movement - a lot of movement. And when I ran the first time, I talked about there was a need to do three things.

    One, to restore the soul of this country. By that, I meant who we are - the idea of dignity; honor - honor, making sure we - you mean what you say; treating people with respect. And - but look what's happened.

    And I said I was - the second reason I was running, I wanted to restore the middle class, the backbone of the country. You know, when the middle class does well, the wealthy do very well and the poor have a way up and there's some - some stability.

    The third thing - which I got, you remember, pilloried for and still occasionally, until very recently - I said we have to unite the country. You know, democracy doesn't work very well unless you can reach a consensus, and you can't reach consensus unless you can have some unity.

    And what we're seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It's not just - it's not just Trump. It's the -it's the entire philosophy that underpins - it's - I'm going say something - it's almost like semi-fascism, the way in which it deals.


    For the first time, you have 50 percent of the American people - 50 percent of the American people say their greatest concern - over 50, I think it's 51 percent in the latest polls - concerned about whether or not democracy can be sustained.

    Did you ever think - 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago - we'd be talking about sustaining democracy in the United States of America?

    There was a major piece today in the press by some serious foreign policy types, talking about the fact that the average life of democracy in history is 300 years, and we're approaching 300 years. It's like - it's just like out of "Alice in Wonderland," some of the stuff we're talking about.

    But what's happened is - I think, as we began to gain hold and do the things that would logically have been done under a normal Republican administration the last time out and/or normal relations between Democrats and Republicans in the Congress, we begin to make some progress.

    We put 200 million shots in people's arms. We were dealing with a circumstance where we now are in a situation where we actually - it's not over by a long shot, but the price of gas is down over $1 on average. And we're moving in the right direction - no guarantee, but we're moving in the right direction.

    We're in a circumstance where we have - you know, I've said a long time ago and I keep saying it - the idea that 12 years of education is sufficient in the 21st century is just not rational.

    One of the reasons why we did so well as a nation at the turn of the 20th century - we had the best education system in the world because it was universally available to everyone. Others had better - elements of their education was better than ours, but as a population, as a whole.

    But the rest of the world is caught up - caught up. We're not in a position to continue along where we are now. We've learned a lot as a consequence of what we've done. We now realize that if you put a kid in school at age three, no matter their background - school, not daycare - they have a 56 percent chance of going all the way through 12 years of school, no matter what the background of the parent - whether they come from a family that has a serious drug problem, or whether or not the mother is single or is being - it doesn't matter. They are exposed to education.

    The idea that we think that we can get by with 12 years - I think we need a minimum of 14 years of education. Two to begin with - so beginning at age three, and two after - after high school that should be free.

    But - so I laid out a program early on, and nobody paid a whole lot of attention to it for a while. But now people are starting to pay attention to it. We're in a situation where, as I said, that we've had record job growth at 10 million jobs in the first month - 18 months in this administration - more than any other President in the history of United States of America. We got the unemployment rate down to 3.5 percent, which is the second lowest ever in American history.

    We're in a circumstance where, you know, my Republican friends keep talking about "the big spending Democrats." Well, if you recall, whether you liked their tax policy or not, they had a $2 trillion tax cut and not a penny which was paid for. Well, guess what? Our first year in office, we cut the deficit by $352 billion. This year, we'll cut the deficit by 1 trillion, 700 billon dollars by the end of October. And the re- - and the act we just passed - the so-called IRA - that is going to reduce the deficit by $300 billion, in addition, because - (applause) -

    So, my point is you're stuck with me because we ended up with the single largest investment in infrastructure in American history other than Eisenhower's highway - national Highway Trust Fund.

    We're in a situation now where we are putting in - we put the first African American woman on the Supreme Court. (Applause.)

    We have - and, by the way, I've been able to appoint more - more judges who are appellate court judges in the federal court who are African American women than all other presidents combined in American history. (Applause.) I made a commitment.

    And, by the way, I'm not just checking off things. I said we need a government that looks like America - that looks like America. And look at the incredible people we have - the Cabinet members we have, the number of women and African Americans and Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans - Latinos that are in the - because we're - we're encouraging people to conclude that they can make a difference if they get engaged.


    And look, we - you know, we rallied the world to stand up against Putin's aggression. When I first got elected, I remember showing up at the G7 - (applause).

    And, by the way, I'm not beating my chest about this, because it's still very dangerous. Very dangerous. It's a very small step between helping Ukraine and a world war with - with Russia, depending on what we do and how we do it. And so, there's a lot going on. And we've already spent several billion dollars - $6 billion dollars so far - in economic and military assistance to Ukraine.

    But the point is that I think we got to a point where I underestimated - and it's not about this particular - my predecessor alone - but I underestimated how much damage the previous four years had done in terms of America's reputation in the world.