He shared that Carter, in hospice care at home, had asked him to deliver his eulogy. "He asked me to do his eulogy – excuse me I shouldn’t say that," Biden remarked. "I spent time with Jimmy Carter, and it’s finally caught up with him. But they found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough." He also implied that the former President’s cancer had returned. These remarks were not recorded as video was not permitted.
Biden was discussing breakthroughs in cancer treatment and urging the audience to increase funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an initiative he created last year to improve the government’s ability to speed biomedical and health research. He introduced ARPA-H as an initiative that "will pursue ideas that break the mold on how we normally support fundamental research and commercial products in this country." It would pursue "ideas so bold no one else, not even the private sector, is willing to give them a chance or to sink a lot of money into trying to solve."
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March 14, 2023
The President then discussed the state of democracy in the U.S. and the results of the 2022 midterm elections. He said, "I think the American public has moved to a place where they're genuinely worried about our democracy. It's not a joke. It's not hyperbole." He also pointed out the polarization in cable news and said, "people tune in to what they want to hear."
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Biden transitioned to cooperation and said his administration has worked with congressional Republicans and would continue to do so with the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. "We were told we couldn’t pass anything in a bipartisan way, but guess what? We passed more major bipartisan legislation than anybody has in the recent past," he said.
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Biden and Carter previously worked together when Carter was President and Biden was a U.S. senator. The two also helped one another's respective campaigns.
Earlier yesterday, Biden appeared alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for an AUKUS summit at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego. During his speech, Biden jokingly asked if, as President, he could instruct the sailors on the Missouri to be at ease. He said the trilateral partnership would enable Australia access to nuclear-powered submarines, which are "nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed," he clarified. Sunak later called AUKUS "the most significant multilateral defense partnership in generations."
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