CHICAGO — President Biden gave a shouting and at times emotional speech Monday as he spoke to the Democratic National Convention after being forced to relinquish the party’s nomination — in remarks that, in a further indignity, were bumped out of primetime.
“America, I love you!” Biden, 81, said, dabbing his eyes after an introduction from his daughter, Ashley Biden.
The crowd — chanting “thank you, Joe!” — continued to applaud the outgoing president for several minutes before he kicked off his address.
“Thank you Kamala, too,” Biden said when the supportive heckling persisted throughout his 51-minute speech, noting his endorsement of Vice President Harris as his replacement nominee.
“I’ve got five months left of my presidency and I have a lot to do. I intend to get it done,” Biden insisted — as he prepared to depart later in the evening for a vacation in Santa Ynez, Calif., following weeks of notably few public events since he dropped his bid for a second term on July 21.
“It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. And I love the job, but I love my country more,” Biden said.
“And all this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, it’s not true.”
Biden said picking Harris, 59, as his running mate in 2020 was “the best decision I made in my whole career” — and claimed that “democracy must be preserved” by electing her.
Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, along with Biden’s family, including scandal-plagued first son Hunter Biden, joined him on stage when he concluded — in a scene that resembled a nomination acceptance celebration.
“Let me ask you, are you ready to vote for freedom? Are we ready to fight for democracy and for America? Let me ask you, are you ready to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz?” Biden implored the thousands of Democrats, who began to trickle out before he even finished speaking.
Biden was set to speak at 9:50 p.m. local time, but his speaking time was delayed by verbose remarks by his warm-up speakers, including Hillary Clinton and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — who gushed over Biden’s tenure after forcing him to step aside.
The delay meant the president was pushed out of primetime.
Biden ended up speaking at 10:27 p.m. — or 11:27 p.m. eastern — limiting the number of live viewers. About half of Americans live in the eastern time zone.
He wrapped up well after midnight in New York.
A Biden aide told Axios: “This is awful. He literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them — do they have to cut him out of prime time?”
‘Too old to stay as president’
The outgoing president showed few signs of perceived cognitive decline that led to his retirement, but at one point admitted “I’m so damn old” — and in a slight slip claimed “I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza” in reference to a troubled cease-fire plan.
He said he began his political career appearing too young and ended it seeming “too old to stay as president” in a rueful note.
“Those protesters out in the street have a point, a lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides,” Biden said of anti-Israel demonstrators outside the gates, who had furiously dubbed him “Genocide Joe.”
Biden tried to share credit for his accomplishments with Harris, while also saying at one point “we both know we have more to do, but we’re moving in the right direction.”
Biden also attacked former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, calling him a “loser” and “convicted felon” and reprising his focus on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — a topic that Harris has notably not focused on during the initial weeks of her substitute candidacy.
“My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, nearly four years ago… I raised my right hand and I swore an oath,” he said. “In front of me was a city surrounded by the National Guard, behind me a Capitol that just two weeks before that had been overrun by a violent mob.”
“It was, as I told you then, a winter of peril and possibility. We were in the grip of a once in the century pandemic, historic joblessness, a call for racial justice long overdue, clear and present threats to our very democracy,” he said.
“Now it is summer, the winter has passed, and with a grateful heart I stand before you on this August night to declare democracy has prevailed, democracy has delivered, and now democracy must be preserved.”
Biden said that still “we’re in a battle for the very soul of America” — a line he emphasized during the 2022 midterm elections.
He repeated a claim that he ran in 2020 due to clashes in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 between anti-racism activists and white supremacists, whom he said “saw as an ally” then-President Trump.
Biden said he was proud of legislative achievement such as his bipartisan infrastructure law and a major environment spending bil, as well as joining the United Auto Workers on the picket line and appointing the Supreme Court’s first black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“COVID no longer controls our lives,” he said, touting America having “the strongest economy in the entire world” with “inflation down, way down, and continuing to go down” after peaking during his second year in office, which Republicans attributed to his policies and large spending bills.
“We finally beat Big Pharma,” Biden declared at one point, correctly using the June 27 debate-stage line that doomed his candidacy when he instead uttered that he “finally beat Medicare.”
‘OG girl dad’
First lady Jill Biden and first daughter Ashley Biden spoke immediately before the outgoing president.
“Joe Biden is the OG girl dad. He told me I could be anything,” Ashley, 43, said, calling her father “one of the most consequential leaders ever in history,” despite being “underestimated his entire life.”
The first lady said there were times when she falls “in love with him all over again,” including “weeks ago when I saw him dig deep into his soul and decide to no longer seek re-election and endorse Kamala Harris.”
Hunter, 54, did not speak but joined his dad on stage at the end — despite the Monday morning release of a report by the Republican-led House impeachment inquiry that said the president committed impeachable offenses linked to his relatives’ foreign business dealings.
Harris, who is being crowned the party’s nominee despite Biden winning each of the party’s primaries and caucuses this year, made a surprise speech gushing over Biden about two hours before he was supposed to speak.
“I want to kick us off by celebrating our incredible president, Joe Biden,” Harris swooned.
“Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation and all you will continue to do. We are forever grateful to you.”
The love-fest from elected Democrats — seemingly designed to soften the blow of the brutal monthlong mutiny that forced Biden to stand aside over concerns about his mental acuity — concluded with Delaware Sen. Chris Coons urging the crowd to chant, “We love Joe!” just before first lady Jill Biden spoke ahead of her husband.
Biden dropped his bid for a second term after a mounting Democratic mutiny over his dismal debate performance on June 27 against Trump, which spurred concerns about his apparent mental decline.
Although the president tried to cling to the nomination, insisting he was mere suffering from a cold at the debate, his position became untenable as top Democrats including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama made clear their view that he should step aside.
Democrats feared a Trump landslide over voter concerns about his mental acuity — and early polling shows Harris in a closer match against the Republican nominee.
“I did what I had to do,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday when asked about her role in Biden’s ouster.
In a reflection of the speed of the shake-up, the official Democratic platform — ratified earlier Monday by delegates — referred 21 times to Biden’s “second term” and contained no mention of Harris’ newer policy proposals, including her plan last week to implement price controls on groceries, which Trump has referred to as “the Maduro plan” in reference to Venezuela’s socialist strongman.
A source told The Post that the platform, drafted weeks before Biden dropped out, wasn’t updated because it was a “challenging thing to do” through the party bureaucracy.
Biden appeared on stage earlier in the day during a walk-through of the stage and insisted he was at peace with his decision — as he prepared to speak and then bolt for a vacation in Santa Ynez, California.
Asked about Trump asserting that Biden’s ouster amounted to a “coup” Biden said: “His stability is still in question.”
Trump had tried to goad Biden into changing his mind — floating on social media this month the possibility that Biden “CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination.”
Last week, Trump charged: “He now HATES Obama and Crazy Nancy more than he hates me! He is an angry man, as he should be. They stole the Presidency from him — ‘It was a Coup!’”
Biden was indeed angry as Democrats sought to shove him out the door, telling “Morning Joe” on July 8 that he dared his detractors to “run against me, go ahead — challenge me at the convention!”
Failed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who served as a warm-up speaker for Biden, paused to smirk as the crowd chanted “lock him up!” about Trump, in reference to his quartet of criminal cases, which the Republican says are politically motivated.
Harris, who will deliver her nomination acceptance speech on Thursday, has enjoyed a prolonged honeymoon period of largely favorable press — in part because she has not given a single interview that could throw her off-script.