Former President Biden said the country is in the midst of “dark days” under President Trump.
“Friends, I can’t sugar coat any of this. These are dark days,” Biden said in Boston on Sunday after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, according to a video from the institute. Biden served alongside the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) for 36 years in the upper chamber.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has overturned many of Biden’s executive orders. Biden has selectively criticized his predecessor and successor during the Trump’s second term.
On Sunday, the former president predicted that the country would “emerge as we always have — stronger, wiser and more resilient, more just, so long as we keep the faith.” He also referenced the companies, academic institutions, media outlets and ordinary citizens that are “standing up” against the administration.
“All of us who are dismayed by the present state of the union, this is no time to give up. It’s time to get up. Get up now, get up,” Biden said.
The speech marked Biden’s first public remarks since he completed a round of radiation treatment in his battle against an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
A spokesperson for Biden told NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network, last week that the treatment lasted several weeks and the former president is “doing well.” She did not comment on whether Biden will need additional rounds of radiation. In announcing his treatment earlier this month, a spokesperson said that the former president was also undergoing hormone treatment.
Biden also rang a ceremonial bell at Penn Medicine to cap off his treatment, according to a video his daughter, Ashley, posted to her Instagram story.
The former president, 82, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in May, with a spokesperson saying at the time that the disease had metastasized to the bone and was “hormone-sensitive.”
After he was diagnosed, Biden posted a photo of his wife, Jill, and their cat, Willow, to the social platform X, saying “cancer touches us all.” Biden’s eldest son, Beau, died in 2015 of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
