Joe Biden’s farewell address warning that “an oligarchy is taking shape” which threatens American democracy sparked polarized reactions from lawmakers that seemed to validate the very democratic fragility the president looked to highlight.

Speaking from the Oval Office for the final time before president-elect Donald Trump’s return to power, on Wednesday Biden sounded an alarm about America’s future. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America,” he said, that posed a challenge to “our basic rights and freedoms”.

Biden urged the US to beware what he described as a growing “tech-industrial complex”, appearing to deliberately echo the 1961 farewell address by a previous president, Dwight Eisenhower, whose warning of a “military-industrial complex” became a byword for the overreach of American corporate power in the democratic sphere.

Biden’s remarks amounted to a not-so-veiled jab at tech billionaires Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who have collectively not just amassed hitherto unseen wealth but have all recently made public gestures of support for Trump. All three are expected to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Within hours, however, Biden’s speech had devolved into another partisan battleground – perhaps the clearest illustration of the political division that has dogged his presidency.

“President Biden delivered his farewell address to a nation that is stronger because of his leadership,” the former House speaker and California representative Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. She praised what she called “four historic years of progress, hope and unity for American families”.

Republican lawmakers appeared to see a different speech entirely.

“Joe Biden’s legacy in one word: Failure,” the Georgia representative Andrew Clyde said on X.

The South Carolina representative Nancy Mace accused Biden of using his farewell not looking at China, Russia and Iran but to attack American citizens, by “calling them ‘oligarchs’ and ‘a threat to democracy.’”

The sharply divergent interpretations came as Biden prepared to hand the presidency back to Trump, who defeated Kamala Harris, the Vice-President, in November following Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the race last summer amid concerns about his age and fitness for office.

Even as he warned of democracy’s fragility, Biden championed his administration’s achievements, including major infrastructure investments, clean energy initiatives, and prescription drug reforms.

The former president Barack Obama praised these accomplishments, noting “17 million new jobs, historic wage gains, and lower health care costs” under Biden’s watch.

Republicans dismissed the claims. “Joe Biden’s presidency will be defined by weakness, failure and dangerously liberal policies,” the Oklahoma congressman Kevin Hern wrote on social media, while the Florida senator Rick Scott said Biden’s speech “should have been a formal apology” for what he termed “endless lawfare” and “inflation-fueling policies”.

The president’s warnings about concentrated wealth and power came alongside calls for constitutional amendments to ensure presidential accountability – remarks that seemed particularly pointed given Trump’s pending return to office.

Biden argued that no president should be immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office, a statement that some Republicans interpreted as a partisan attack rather than a broader democratic principle.

Hours before the address, Biden had announced what may prove his final diplomatic achievement: a breakthrough ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that could end the 15-month conflict in Gaza. The deal, which Biden first proposed last spring and which Trump’s team helped finalize, offered a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation – though it barely featured in lawmakers’ responses to his farewell.

Instead, reactions split predictably along party lines, with Democrats such as the Wisconsin representative Mark Pocan saying he will “always be proud” of the achievements in creating millions of jobs and turning around the economy, while Republicans counted down the days until Trump’s return.

“Hopefully he has time to finish packing up his boxes after tonight’s speech because President Trump arrives back at the White House in 5 days,” wrote the Indiana Representative Rudy Yakym on X.

Biden’s speech illustrated how his presidency, which began with ambitious promises to restore America’s soul and unite a divided nation, ends with those divisions still stark. While speaking of a “crumbling” free press, rising disinformation and dark money in politics – systemic issues that ought in theory to transcend party lines – they were nevertheless immediately absorbed by politicians into a preferred partisan lens.

“We’re sad to see you go, but the legacy you’ve created will impact our society for years to come,” wrote Mississippi representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, while Lisa McClain, the Republican representative for Michigan, offered a sharply different take: “January 20th could not come soon enough.”