Late, Rambling, And Off-Key: Biden Stumbles Through First Post-Trump Speech

Former President Joe Biden broke his three-month silence Tuesday evening, addressing Social Security in his first public speech since President Trump took office.

Biden addressed a gathering of advocates for disabled people in Chicago, accusing Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency of trying to “dismantle” Social Security.

Biden, already 30 minutes late, was off to a rough start as the former president appeared to begin reading off the teleprompter while the walkout music was still playing, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was inaudible to the audience.

The former president began the speech with a bizarre boast about his bona fides as a pro-civil rights senator, rambling, “I remember pulling in, pulling into the parking lot. And I had never seen, I had never seen hardly any black people in Scranton at the time. And I was only going in fourth grade. And I remember seeing the kids going by at the time, colored kids on a bus going by.”

“They never turned right to go to Claremont High School. I wondered why. I asked my mom, ‘Why?’ ‘So in Delaware, I’m not allowed to go to school, public school with white kids, honey.’ That sparked my sense of outrage as a kid, just like it does [sic].”

President Biden randomly starts screaming in his first speech since leaving office. He tells a story about seeing black kids on buses:

"I remember watching a bus go by. It was full of colored kids…I had never seen those." pic.twitter.com/LdcpiLKSXV

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 15, 2025

Transitioning back to the teleprompter, Biden launched into an assault on Trump’s pullback of the bureaucracy, listing off a number of “achievements” under his administration that the current president is supposedly destroying.

“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has [caused] so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon. They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration.”

In a bizarre claim, Biden said, “We strengthened the anti-fraud measures to protect people’s identities and to make sure benefits are going to people who actually they belong to. By the way, those 300-year-old folks getting that Social Security, I want to meet them because I like to figure out how to live that.”

This is despite Elon Musk’s DOGE uncovering countless cases of fraud and abuse since Biden’s departure.

Throughout the speech, Biden frequently shifted from either a barely audible whisper or practically shouting at the audience, mirroring many speeches from the end of his presidency.

Fox News had to briefly cut Biden’s speech short to fact-check a multitude of false statements, with Brett Baier cutting the president during his remarks.

“President Biden in Chicago talking about Social Security there, saying the administration has ‘dismantled’ Social Security. They have fired and gotten rid of a number of employees, but in that interview with ElonMusk and his DOGE team, they said they’re going after waste, fraud, and abuse in Social Security.”

“And also President Trump has said that he will not touch benefits. In fact, Elon Musk is pledging that benefits will be protected more by what they’re doing.”

WATCH: Fox News cuts away from Joe Biden’s speech for a fact check on his Social Security claims from @BretBaier:

“President Biden in Chicago talking about Social Security there, saying the administration has ‘dismantled’ Social Security. They have fired and gotten rid of a… pic.twitter.com/SWcbksxEwC

— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) April 15, 2025

Musk did raise eyebrows several weeks ago during an appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast when he called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” arguing that the amount being paid into the system is dwarfed by future obligations.

Trump addressed the program during his March speech to Congress, citing “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.”

The Social Security Administration has lost 7,000 employees under the streamlining efforts of Trump and Musk, with thousands more cuts planned.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt joked about Biden’s appearance at a Monday conference. “My first reaction when seeing former President Biden was speaking tonight was — I’m shocked he is speaking at nighttime,” she said. “I thought his bedtime was much earlier than his speech tonight.”