The remarks represented the president’s sharpest and most extensive criticism of Trump since the November election, with his attacks growing more direct as he got deeper into the nearly 40-minute speech.

Biden blamed Trump for mishandling the pandemic response and deepening the recession the current president inherited in 2021 as a result. He mocked Trump for his failed first-term infrastructure push and for spurning pledges to “buy American.” And he cautioned that Trump’s plan to renew a set of expiring tax cuts would drive up the deficit or result in deep cuts to social services.

“I pray to God the president throws away Project 2025,” Biden said, referencing the Heritage Foundation policy playbook that several Trump nominees helped author. “I think it would be an economic disaster.”

Biden’s remarks come amid furious debate among Democrats over how to rebuild the party after Vice President Kamala Harris lost — and how much Biden and his economic policies were to blame.

Biden up until now had sat out that discussion, even as Democrats fault his administration for failing to more quickly and aggressively combat inflation that drove up everyday prices and soured voters’ view of the economy overall.

But on Tuesday, he mounted a lengthy defense of an economic record that he predicted would only grow more popular — especially in comparison to Trump.

He urged voters to judge the next administration by whether it improves on some of the White House’s favored economic metrics, including the current low unemployment rate and growing total number of jobs created. The president also continued to insist that the economy was stronger than voters realize.

“We’ve entered a new phase of our economic resurgence,” Biden said, pointing to growing investment in infrastructure and manufacturing. “With the outcome of this election we also face an inflection point: Do we continue to grow the economy … or do we move backwards?”

Biden did credit Trump for one thing: signing his name on the stimulus checks sent out to Americans during the Covid pandemic.

“I didn’t,” Biden said of his own round of Covid-era payments. “Stupid.”

Still, when it came to the stubborn inflation that dragged down Biden’s approval ratings and is widely seen as a major contributor to Democrats’ electoral loss, the president stuck to his insistence he’d handled it as well as possible.

Biden blamed the inflation spike on the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and touted his administration’s ability to bring it back down without tipping the U.S. into a recession. He called his expansive legislative agenda critical to generating growth that the country would benefit from over time, brushing off concerns about whether the money spent in the beginning of his term had contributed to pushing up the price of goods.

“It was long past time for America to make a generational investment in our infrastructure, in our manufacturing base,” he said. “I know it’s been hard for many Americans to see, and I understand they’re just trying to figure out how to put three squares on the table. But I believe it was the right thing to do.”

While Biden acknowledged that people are still struggling with lingering high prices, he argued that the U.S. overall had weathered the pandemic recovery better than any other developed nation. And, just over a month before handing over the reins to Trump, he sought to claim credit for all the economy’s strongest elements — and preemptively cast blame should they suddenly falter.

“It’s my profound hope that the new administration will preserve and build on this progress,” Biden said. “But we’ll all know in time what will happen.”