State of the Union: Biden's Pitch to the Nation
Americast
BBC
4.3 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Under the close gaze of his critics - and millions of American voters - Joe Biden delivered arguably the most significant State of the Union address in recent times.
The president chose to focus on his economic record, his plans to to fix America's immigration system and repeatedly took aim against Donald Trump.
The Americast team chew over the president's speech with the help of Joe Biden's former speechwriter, Jeff Nussbaum, who told us what it's like to work with him and how you judge the success of a speech like the one Biden just delivered.
HOSTS: • Justin Webb, Radio 4 presenter • Marianna Spring, disinformation and social media correspondent • Sarah Smith, North America editor
GUEST: Jeff Nussbaum, former speechwriter for Joe Biden
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This episode was made by George Dabby with Rufus Gray, Catherine Fusillo, and Claire Betzer. The technical producer was Philip Bull. The series producer is George Dabby. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Mariana, good morning. |
| 0:06.0 | Good morning. |
| 0:07.0 | And I say that because it really is morning for us and early morning. |
| 0:10.8 | Actually, it's the normal time of day for me, but given my day job. |
| 0:13.3 | Yeah, me and you have so much. Okay, so five o'clock in the morning, British time. |
| 0:19.7 | We've seen the State of the Union speech. He's given it. He survived it, which, you know, I mean, it's a low bar, but he, well, not only survived it, but he walked in and he walked out again and he said some things |
| 0:34.8 | that he hopes will really bring people around not just to the various things that he |
| 0:39.4 | wants to do I think it is fair to say but but more than that he to the idea that he's got |
| 0:44.0 | vigor that will last all the way through to the to the election. |
| 0:46.8 | When America gets knocked down we get back up. |
| 0:51.8 | We keep going. That's America. It's because of you America is coming back. It's because |
| 0:58.7 | of you our future is brightest because of you that tonight we can proudly say the state of our union is strong and |
| 1:06.4 | getting stronger. |
| 1:07.4 | And one of my favorite things that we've been sent is this brilliant bingo |
| 1:15.6 | sort of drinking game by Max on discord which is basically all the stuff that you |
| 1:21.2 | would expect Biden to say during the speech and |
| 1:24.2 | whether we should drink we have not been we have not been actually drinking however |
| 1:29.2 | there are quite a lot of things that have definitely come up and all the classic |
| 1:33.2 | tropes. I like things like fellow Americans, your average American, which he's |
| 1:37.8 | written down here. All those classic tropes you hear all the time in these kinds of |
| 1:41.5 | speeches. What's your favorite Justin? |
... |
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