WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will deliver a farewell address to the nation Wednesday from the Oval Office, five days before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in.

The president's remarks at 8 p.m. Eastern are set to be his last significant opportunity to speak to Americans and the world before he leaves office at noon Jan. 20. They will follow a speech Monday at the State Department, where he will deliver an address focused on his foreign policy legacy.

Biden said Friday he was still considering whether to give pardons to people whom Trump criticized or threatened.

Speaking to reporters later at the White House, Biden said he and his aides are paying close attention to rhetoric from Trump and his allies about his political opponents and those involved in his various criminal and civil woes.

"It depends on some of the language and expectations that Trump broadcast in the last couple days here as to what he's going to do," Biden said. "The idea that he would punish people for not adhering to what he thinks should be policy related to his well-being is just outrageous."

Biden has just 10 days left in office, and the institutionalist has been using his waning days in office to restore some of the transition norms broken by his predecessor-turned-successor.

But issuing preemptive pardons — for actual or imagined offenses by Trump's critics that could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration — would stretch the powers of the presidency in untested ways.

Trump's frequent targets include former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. They helped lead the House committee that investigated Trump supporters' Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump aimed particular criticism at special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Biden, who Trump said should be jailed, scoffed at the notion that he would pardon himself. "What would I pardon myself for?" he asked incredulously. "No, I have no contemplation of pardoning myself for anything. I didn't do anything wrong."

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the Republican members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, rejected the prospect of a pardon from Biden earlier this past week in an appearance on CNN.

"I understand the theory behind it because Donald Trump has clearly said he's going to go after everybody," he said. "But the second you take a pardon and it looks like you're guilty of something — I'm guilty of nothing besides bringing the truth to the American people and, in the process, embarrassing Donald Trump."

In his remarks to reporters, Biden said a decision by the social media giant Meta to end fact-checking on Facebook was "really shameful," calling it "contrary to American justice."

The move to replace third-party fact-checking with user-written "community note " — similar to those on Trump backer Elon Musk's social platform, X — was the latest example of a media company moving to accommodate the incoming administration. It comes on the fourth anniversary of Zuckerberg's banning Trump from his platforms after the insurrection.

Biden added: "You think it doesn't matter that they let it be printed? Where millions of people read it, things that are simply not true. I mean, I don't know what that's all about. It's just completely contrary to everything America's about. We want to tell the truth."

On Friday, speaking from the Roosevelt Room, Biden said he didn't think that dropping out of the presidential race over the summer helped deliver the election to Trump. Biden stepped aside amid enormous pressure from Democrats following a disastrous debate performance, and Vice President Kamala Harris ran in his place with just a few months to set up a campaign that normally is years in the making.

“I think I would have beaten Trump, and I think that Kamala could have — would have beaten Trump,” he said. “I thought it was important to unify the party. Even though I thought I could win again, I thought it was better to unify the party.”

Biden said he didn't want to cause a divided party to lose an election, adding: “That's why I stepped aside. But I was confident she could win.”

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier Friday that Biden would reflect on his “50-plus years as a public official" in his speech Monday.

“He has some thoughts on the future, not just of the country, but how this country moves forward as a leader, when you think about global events, important global issues, and certainly he will lay that out," she said.

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