Biden awards 18 Medals of Freedom, and delivers one unmistakable message

WASHINGTON — With 16 days left in a political career that spanned a half-century, President Joe Biden on Saturday conferred one of the nation’s highest honors on core members of the political, financial and celebrity establishment of which he has long been a part.

President-elect Donald Trump will replace Biden on Jan. 20, determined to continue his assault on what he has long called “the swamp.” In 2016, Trump vowed to wage war against establishment members in both parties who he said had “reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.”

But on Saturday, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 18 people, including some of the brightest lights of the old guard that Trump wants to tear down. In doing so, the 82-year-old president is sending an unmistakable message of support for a democratic order he has said is threatened by Trump’s reelection.

“Let’s remember, our sacred effort continues, and to keep going, as my mother would say, we have to keep the faith,” he told the crowd in the East Room of the White House at the end of the ceremony.

Among those receiving the award were Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state whom Trump threatened to jail and who received a standing ovation Saturday; Robert F. Kennedy, the assassinated senator whose son has embraced Trump; and George Romney, the late father of former Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who repeatedly rejected Trump’s actions and philosophy. The younger Romney accepted the award Saturday. Kennedy’s medal was accepted by his daughter, Kerry.

As many presidents have done with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Biden also honored some of his party’s most prolific fundraisers, including the man who looms largest of all among Democratic donors — George Soros, a liberal activist billionaire whom Republicans have cast as the party’s evil puppet master.

They also included the media executive and cultural figure Anna Wintour, who put the first lady, Jill Biden, on the cover of Vogue twice in the past four years while spurning Melania Trump during her husband’s presidency. Wintour is one of the leading fundraisers in the fashion industry, having hosted events for Biden’s reelection campaign in London and Paris last year.

Biden also recognized artists, musicians, sports figures, philanthropists and others who have contributed to society, including singer Bono, actor Michael J. Fox, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson and investor David M. Rubenstein.

The 19th person picked to receive the award — soccer megastar Lionel Messi — did not attend the ceremony or send a representative to accept on his behalf because of a scheduling conflict, according to the White House.

“As cultural icons, dignified statesmen, humanitarians, rock stars, sports stars, you feed the hungry, you give hope to those that are hurting, and you craft the signs and sounds of our movements and our memories,” Biden said.

All modern presidents have awarded the medal to those whom they found deserving, often as they are leaving the political scene for good and sometimes with an ideological tilt. It is seen by historians as a final use of the presidential megaphone to say to Americans: This is whom we should admire and emulate.

After Trump won in 2016, President Barack Obama gave the medal to NBA star Michael Jordan, actors Tom Hanks and Robert De Niro and others. Earlier, Obama had given the award to Biden, who had served as his vice president.

Four years later, as Trump was leaving office, he gave the medal to two professional golfers, an Olympic athlete, and Reps. Devin Nunes of California and Jim Jordan of Ohio, two of his fiercest Republican loyalists in Congress.

But Biden’s use of the presidential prerogative appeared to be more even pointed than that of some of his predecessors.

His decision to give the medal posthumously to Kennedy could be read as a rebuke to Kennedy’s son, a member of perhaps the country’s most famous Democratic family. The decision by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to endorse Trump during the campaign — despite denunciations from most of his relatives — helped lead to Trump’s choice of him to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

The White House noted that the elder Romney, a Republican, had been chair and president of American Motors Corp. and had later served as governor of Michigan and as secretary of housing and urban development. The younger Romney is the only Republican to vote twice to convict Trump after his two impeachments.

The award for the elder Romney echoes Biden’s decision this week to award the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who led the effort to hold Trump accountable for his actions during the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Both awards from a Democratic president to prominent Republicans offered to give Biden the kind of public relations jolt that has mostly been reserved for Trump since the election.

The same could not be said for Soros. By awarding the medal to him, Biden is acknowledging how important the investor and philanthropist has been to the Democratic Party. That is something that many members of Biden’s party have been wary of doing, fearing that Trump and other Republicans would seize on it as evidence of the conspiratorial control they say he has.

But Biden seems willing to ignore that concern. After weeks in which Trump has showcased Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, as a member of his inner circle, Biden appeared to want to say: We have our billionaires, too.

Soros has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on progressive politics since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which unleashed a torrent of money into politics from businesses and the wealthy people who run them. Soros and his family crucially stood by Biden immediately after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last year.

Here are the others awarded the medal on Saturday:

— Ralph Lauren, a fashion designer;

— Bill Nye, as TV personality better known as “the Science Guy”;

— José Andrés, a chef and the founder of World Central Kitchen;

— Ash Carter, a former defense secretary who died in 2022;

— Jane Goodall, a primatologist whose work with primates expanded the understanding of human evolution;

— Fannie Lou Hamer, a racial justice activist who helped lay the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and who died in 1977;

— George Stevens Jr., founder of the American Film Institute and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors; and

— Denzel Washington, an actor.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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