Hey.
Hello, Arizona.
Hey.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well,
you might have seen a few people showed up in
Philadelphia the other night,
and then 10,000 plus walked into a field in western
Wisconsin.
And then on Wednesday, the largest crowd of the campaign
showed up in Detroit,
MI.
But Arizona just couldn't leave it alone,
could you?
You know,
it's not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or
anything.
So
wow. Let me begin. Let me begin by giving a
few thanks to some people here and a few dear
folks to us.
First of all, I want to thank Arizona
for sharing Senator Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords with the
rest of the country.
Gabby was a classmate of mine in O 6 and
they are both national treasures.
Thank you. Arizona
also had the privilege of serving with with Congressman Gallego.
And I'll have to tell you
he was an amazing colleague and I have to tell
you he's going to be an amazing senator.
But we get a we,
we get,
we, we get a 2 for with Ruben because we
know who is never going to be a United States
senator.
To all the local elected officials,
thank you. But the most important thank you to each
and everyone of you.
Look,
you took time out of your busy lives.
You found babysitters. You took time off work.
You'll walk from miles. And look,
I'm a Minnesotan. I'm like a damn snowman.
I'm melting here.
We walk on water half the year in Minnesota.
It's so damn cold. But,
But not you. You came and you came into the
space with neighbors
and you came here for one beautiful,
simple reason. You love this democracy.
I'll. I'll tell you what.
Wow, wow, wow. Well, I couldn't be prouder to stand
with you,
and I couldn't be prouder to be on this ticket.
You know what's at the end of this little journey?
Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.
This is a leader who wakes up every day on
the side of the American people.
This is
she will take on the predators,
she will take on the fraudsters,
she will take on the transnational gangs.
And she will stand up to the corporate interests and
put middle America first.
And she's been effective. She's been willing to reach across
the aisle no matter what,
just to make sure it improves people's lives.
And I'll have to tell you,
I know a little something about commitment to people.
Some of you heard this.
I was born in a small town in Nebraska.
And we talk about small towns.
These are those Nebraskans that moved out here for the
winter.
So,
but look, small town was all about community.
My mom and dad, they taught us to show some
care to your neighbors,
show some generosity, work towards a common good,
be a decent human being to your neighbors.
My dad, and some of you know him in here,
you had him, a chain smoking Korean War era veteran,
cared about his community. But two days after I turned
17,
he took me down to join the Army National Guard.
And for 24 years, I proudly wore that uniform.
I'm proud of that service.
But with my nation gave my dad and millions of
others and me was an opportunity to use the GI
Bill to get a college education.
My dad was a teacher,
my brothers and sisters and I,
my brothers and sisters and I all became teachers
and we married teachers.
I had the privilege of teaching high school social studies
for 20 years
and, you might have heard,
coaching A state championship football team.
Now, if the Vikings could just win,
that would be the
Weberry look
that worked better near Green Bay,
I'll tell you. So,
Look, it was my students.
It was my students who encouraged me to run.
They saw in me what I hope to instill in
them,
a commitment to a common good,
the belief, the true belief,
that one person, one of us in here can make
a difference in somebody's life.
I I wasn't very politically savvy because I did not
know it when I decided to run for Congress,
that there had been one other Democrat elected in that
district since
1892,
what my neighbors believed. And they graced me with an
opportunity to serve them in the United States Congress for
12 years.
And I'm proud of the work I did as ranking
member on the Veterans Affairs Committee,
working on the Agriculture Committee.
And I worked hand in hand with Republicans to make
sure that we were crafting legislation that improved the lives
of veterans and people all across this country.
I learned how to compromise without compromising my values.
And as governor of the great state of Minnesota,
I brought all of those experiences.
I brought all of those experiences to the challenges facing
the state of Minnesota.
This idea about a common good,
this idea about something bigger than ourselves,
this idea of kindness, generosity and compassion that this building,
which I have been told,
by the way, might be the largest political gathering in
the history of Arizona.
I,
I think it's, I think it's safe to say Donald
Trump sees the world a little differently than we do.
First and foremost, can be very clear about this.
He doesn't know the first thing about service.
It's hard to provide service when you're too busy serving
only yourself.
Again and again and again,
Donald Trump weakens our country to strengthen his own hands.
You've watched him mock our laws.
You watched him so chaos and division at every opportunity.
And that's to say nothing of his record as president,
as governors, as governors. He froze during COVID and pitted
us in a hunger game against our neighbors to try
and find basic life saving needs.
And because of him, our neighbors died.
By failing to address COVID,
he drove the economy into the ground.
And let's be very clear,
the statistics and the facts are clear about this.
Violent crime was up under Donald Trump,
and we don't even have to count his crimes in
that to make it out.
So
still
look
those
better yet, beat the hell out of him at the
ballot box.
Beat the hell out of him at the ballot
box. Look, you and I,
especially the Gray hairs in the crowd,
we know. We know our relatives.
Republicans used to be the people talking about freedom,
not this group. When they talk about freedom,
it means that the government should be free to invade
your exam room with your doctor.
Look, in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal
choices they make.
We may, we maybe wouldn't make the same choices,
but we respect them. And I know in Minnesota and
in Arizona and places across this country,
you know what makes society work best is when you
learn a golden rule.
Mind your own damn business.
We don't need it.
I don't I don't need you telling me what books
to read.
I don't need you telling me about what religion we
worship.
And I sure the heck
don't need you to tell me about my family.
Look, this, this one's personal for me.
This one's personal for me about IVF and reproductive care.
When my wife and I,
my wife of 30 years,
because yes, we share family values.
We just make our own damn choices about our family.
But when we wanted to have children,
we went through years of fertility treatment.
And I remember it was like it was yesterday,
just waiting for good news.
And then the phone would ring and you would be
tense,
stop. And then you would hear that the treatments had
failed.
It was a it would blot out the sun that
you just wanted something so beautiful and so simple to
have a child.
And then one day, and it wasn't by chance,
when that news came and we welcomed our daughter into
the world,
we named her Hope. We named her Hope.
I'm not crying. You're crying.
So
when Vice President Harris and I talk about freedom,
we're very clear. We mean the freedom to make your
own healthcare decisions
and for all of our children to be free to
go to school without worrying they'll be shot dead in
their classroom.
And in Minnesota, believe me,
we believe in the Second Amendment,
but we also believe in common sense gun violence laws,
I remind my colleagues. And I was in Congress.
Ruben could tell the story.
For three years in a row,
I was the Top Gun in the Congressional Trap chute.
So we can shoot better than them too.
Just by the way,
when Vice President Harris talks about freedom,
it's when freedom is when education is a ticket to
the middle class,
not crippling student loan debt
and this building and what we believe in,
we are people that settle our political differences not through
violence,
but through voting.
It's a simple
imagine every person in here is going to vote and
every person in here is going to get 10 other
people to vote and here's
and let's just go ahead and not go through this
thing that it's so close.
Let's just win big, people.
Let's just win big.
That's our choice. How often,
how often you get a choice so simple that this
is going to decide the direction of our country.
We have 87 days to decide the direction we're going
to go.
And I've been saying it,
we can do anything for 87 days.
Anything.
And my mantra is, and look,
you can see it on me over the last five
days.
We'll sleep when we're dead.
Not now, not now.
Look, you know it and I know it,
but I think we need to be reminded,
you know, exactly what Donald Trump's plans are.
You know which direction he's taking us.
Don't believe this guy. Don't believe.
That's like, listen, no one in here believes this guy.
So anyway.
But don't believe it when he's playing dumb about this
project
2025.
He knows exactly what it'll do.
They are not playing. They wrote their plan out.
But just like they're getting arrogant about it,
they're saying the quiet stuff out loud.
It'll take our freedoms, It'll rig the economy for the
Super rich.
It'll underfund veterans. And you know that if he goes
back again,
he's not only going to let go where he left
off,
it is going to be much,
much, much worse.
So look, rising costs, pulling healthcare from us,
you know, the whole routine.
Look, I get this too.
I know I'm preaching to the choir,
a damn big and beautiful choir,
but practice is over, people.
The choir needs to sing.
Trump. Stop fighting for your family.
He doesn't give a damn,
and his running mate shares the same dangerous,
twisted backward agenda.
Yeah,
every kid. Every kid in my class of 25 studied
at Yale,
had their career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires,
and then writes a book trashing the very people who
raised you.
I've said it. It wasn't a name.
It was an observation. These guys come up with the
weirdest damn ideas that you will ever imagine.
You know it's true.
But here's the good news.
We know the stakes. We know who they are.
When they told us, we believe them.
We know what's coming. But here's the big thing about
it is
that's a reality that's not going to happen because the
people in this building and millions across the country,
this is a campaign about the future.
We know what's there. We know it can come.
We're not people who are afraid of the future.
We shape the future.
Kamala Harris believes in the freedom to make your own
choices.
She believes in the opportunity for every single person to
enter the middle class.
And she believes something so beautiful.
She believes in the promise of America,
the promise of America.
So I want to say thank you,
Madam Vice President, for the trust you placed in me.
And I want to say something else that this incredible
leader,
this incredible woman has brought to this fight.
She
she has brought back compassion and decency and humor
and joy to our politics.
So Arizona, Arizona, bring that joy with you.
Bring those smiles, bring that positive future as you join
me in welcoming the next President of the United States,
Pamela Harris.