Biden talks slavery but avoids Trump, China, and Hunter in Angola

Biden has declined to say whether he will hold a closing press conference before leaving office, and his exit approvals now sit at the lowest point of any outgoing modern president.

The president has largely avoided the public eye following Vice President Kamala Harris’s decisive loss to President-elect Donald Trump, and doubts remain that Biden can salvage his own flagging legacy with just over a month left in office.

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Biden promised back in 2023 that he would travel to Africa before leaving office, but he delayed the trip multiple times over the past year, and just after departing for Africa, the president announced a pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, despite spending the past several months promising not to do so.

Though Biden did answer one question from reporters on Tuesday, regarding the South Korean president’s surprise declaration of martial law the night prior, he has steadily ignored the stream of inquiries about his son since touching down in Africa.

On Tuesday, Biden visited Angolan President Joao Lourenco at the Presidential Palace in Luanda, Angola, where he claimed to be “very proud” of becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit Angola and announced more than $1 billion in new humanitarian support for Africans displaced by drought and food insecurity.

That total includes nearly $823 million from the United States Agency for International Development and nearly $186 million from the State Department.

“The United States is all in on Africa,” he continued. “We know African leaders and citizens are seeking more than just investment, so the United States is expanding our relationship all across Africa, from assistance to aid, investment to trade, moving from patrons to partners.”

The president and his team held additional meetings with Lourenco’s Cabinet, according to senior administration officials, including a particular focus on the Lobito Corridor, the first transcontinental railroad in Africa and America’s largest rail investment outside of the continental U.S.

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“President Biden started off talking about how this is a really transformed partnership over the last centuries, but particularly the last three years,” one Biden official told reporters. “When you think about this, this is a relationship that began in slavery, which President Biden has called the original sin of the United States, then went through the Cold War, when we were mostly on opposing sides, but then, since President Lourenco took office, and since President Biden took office four years ago, it has really become a deep partnership and a really warm one.”

The African continent is an emerging theater in America’s proxy-economic war with China, with both the first Trump administration and Biden racing to make up for lost time in combating Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Nonetheless, a senior administration official told reporters that neither the prospects for U.S. investments in Africa during Trump’s coming term in office nor China came up during Biden’s talks with Lourenco on Tuesday.

The president did concede during his bilateral spray with Lourenco that U.S. investments in Angola and other African nations were “not selfless.”

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“We need you to succeed,” he declared. “The future of the world is here.”

Later in the day, Biden paid a visit to the National Museum of Slavery, where curators briefed him on a number of relics of the trans-Atlantic slave trade that were on display.

And in remarks following the tour, the president again commented on how slavery has bound the U.S. and West Africa together through the centuries.

“We’re gathered in a solemn location because, to fully consider how far our two countries have come in our friendship, we have to remember how we began,” the president told the crowd. “Our people lie at the heart of the deep and profound connection that forever binds Africa and the United States together. We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains and subjected to unimaginable cruelty.”

“I’ve learned that while history can be hidden, it cannot and should not be erased. It should be faced,” he continued. “It’s our duty to face our history, the good, the bad, and the ugly, the whole truth. That’s what great nations do.”

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You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.