Pablo PardoWashington Correspondent

Washington Correspondent

Updated Friday, March 8, 2024-04:02

  • Middle East Biden orders the US Armed Forces to build a port in Gaza to bring humanitarian aid

Joe Biden

has become the leader of the optimists.

Like

Hillary Clinton

in 2016 (with poor results), the president of

the United States

launched his State of the Union Address today with a tone of optimism intended to mark the contrast between his vision of the United States and that of the candidate,

Donald Trump,

who sees the country as a kind of war zone, and who today meets with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán - at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

The president has defended a future for the United States based on "freedom and democracy. A future based on the core values ​​that have defined America:

honesty, decency, dignity and equality."

Although he has not been mentioned by name, he is a stark contrast to his rival, Donald Trump, who is indicted on 91 criminal charges, including insurrection and violation of the Espionage Act, and who on Monday must demonstrate to Justice that he has 83.3 million dollars (76 million euros) to compensate E. Jean Carroll, the woman he sexually abused.

Biden's speech had

five very defined ideas.

The first,

the defense of his economic management,

which has made that country the fastest growing economy of the G-7 and, in addition, has full employment but which, due to the uselessness of communication from the White House, no one attributes to Biden. .

"I inherited an economy that was on the brink," he said on Capitol Hill.

"Now our economy is literally the envy of the world.

15 million new jobs in just three years, a record. Unemployment is at its lowest level in 50 years," he said.

Biden, who has claimed to be "proud to be the first president to have been on a picket line of strikers", has dedicated

a good part of his speech to unions, something extremely unusual in the US.

He has invited the president of the automotive workers union, UAW,

Shawn Fain,

the star of the US labor movement.

Fain secured a historic labor agreement from General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which has now set a goal for Tesla to accept labor organizations in its factories.

The second element was more political.

On the one hand

, the defense of democracy inside and outside the borders of the United States.

It was a direct allusion to Donald Trump, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other.

The president of the House of Representatives, Republican

Mike Johnson,

has blocked the approval, on the orders of Donald Trump, of an aid package of more than 60,000 euros to Kiev, and at least in the coming weeks there will be no possibility for it to be processed.

Trump was mentioned several times during the speech: "My predecessor

failed in the most important duty of a president,"

he said in reference to Trump's response to COVID-19, an issue that Democrats had not raised in the campaign until now. .

Biden has also explicitly reaffirmed his

intention to continue supporting Ukraine

"in the face of Putin's aggression", but has not announced any new initiatives (at which point Johnson has neither stood up nor applauded).

For the Russian president he had a message: "We will not retreat. We will not give in, I will not give in. History is watching us."

Likewise, he has once again supported the establishment of a six-week truce in Gaza and has announced the creation of a port in that territory to facilitate the arrival of humanitarian aid.

The fourth component, which will be the lynchpin of Biden's campaign as it was in 2002, is his

ability to work with the Republican opposition.

The president has achieved the greatest legislative successes of a US head of state and government since, depending on who you ask,

Ronald Reagan

(who governed from 1981 to 1989) or

Lyndon B. Johnson

(who governed from 1963 to 1969). ).

It is, again, a subtle way of marking distance with Trump, who has never been a friend of consensus and stands out, rather, for his capacity for confrontation.

"My predecessor and some of you want to bury what happened on January 6 [2021, when Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol]"

And finally, Joe Biden has defended

his social agenda,

especially on issues such as contraceptives, abortion and, since the Alabama Supreme Court's decision banning it, in vitro fertilization.

The defense of abortion has been fierce.

He goes so far as to promise to restore the right if he regains control of Congress: "If Americans send me a Congress that supports pro-choice, I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as law."

Women vote Democratic, and Republican policy on these matters is very important to their base, but absolutely unpopular to the majority of the population.

"Those who boast about the overturning of Roe v. Wade have no idea about the power of women in the United States, but they discovered it when reproductive freedom was at the polls and won in 2022 and they will discover it again in 2024," he noted before both houses of Congress.

Among the guests of the first lady,

Jill Biden,

to witness the intervention live were Kate Fox, who was denied an abortion by the Texas Supreme Court, and

Latorya Beasley,

who had an in vitro fertilization treatment canceled in Alabama.

"Kate and her husband had to leave their state to receive the care she needed. What her family has gone through should never happen, but it is happening to so many others. There are states banning abortions, criminalizing doctors, and also forcing rape survivors and incest to leave their states," Biden said.

Biden also voiced his opposition to cutting or privatizing pensions and the public-private Medicare senior health care system, two ideas that the Republican Party and Donald Trump have defended.

Sweden's Prime Minister

Ulf Kristersson

was present.

"Welcome to NATO," Biden told him.

He also remembered the Atlantic alliance and quoted Trump when he said that

"one of my predecessors has told Putin: 'Do whatever you want'"

in reference to invading a NATO country.