Barack Obama Florida Rally Speech Transcript for Joe Biden October 24

Barack Obama: (00:00)
Hello, Florida. Oh, it’s good to be back in Florida. Can everybody please give it up for George? What an outstanding young man. He is the number one senior at Miami Northwestern with a perfect GPA. Let me just say that when I was George’s age, I did not have a perfect GPA. What a remarkable young man, we’re so proud of him. That’s the future. Give it up for your representative Frederica Wilson. We’ve also got Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and your state agricultural commissioner Nikki Fried. They’re in the house. You got that horn honking good.

So 10 days, Miami. 10 days until the most important election in our lifetimes. But the good news is you don’t have to wait for November 3rd to cast your ballot. You’ve got two ways to vote right now. Number one, you can vote early in person right now through next Sunday. Number two, you can vote from home with a mail-in ballot. Do not wait, put it in the mail today or drop it off at a drop box location in Miami-Dade County. And if you need more information, just go to iwillvote.com to find out where to early vote in person or to drop off your ballot. And if you’ve already voted, what do you need to do? You’ve got to go help your friends and family make a plan to vote. Because this election requires every single one of us. What we do in these next 10 days will matter for decades to come.

Now, I’ve sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president. They’re very different people. Donald Trump, I knew he would not embrace my vision. I knew he wasn’t going to continue my policies, but I did hope that for the country’s sake, he’d show at least a little bit of interest in taking the job seriously. That’s not how it worked out. He hasn’t shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody except himself and his friends or treating the presidency like a reality show to give himself more attention. And as we noted the other day, his TV ratings are down. But, listen, Miami, the rest of us have to live with the consequences of what he’s done.

At least 220,000 Americans are dead. More than 100,000 small businesses have closed. Half a million jobs are gone right here in Florida, half a million jobs. And I understand the president’s coming to Florida today. You think he’s hard at work, coming up with a plan to get us out of this mess?

Audience: (04:33)
No.

Well, I don’t know because I know he’s had a tough week. Everybody’s been very unfair to Donald Trump this week. In his debate with Joe on Thursday night… And by the way, I thought Joe Biden was unbelievable this week. He was fantastic this week. But during the debate, Trump was asked, ” What is your plan for the new phase of COVID?” Which is a pretty good question, considering that we just saw the highest number of cases spike up yesterday. So you would think he’d be ready for a response. Instead, he just said it wasn’t his fault and he didn’t have one. He said, ” It’s now gone in a bunch of states,” just as states are reaching new record highs nationwide. He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of what’s taking place all across the country.

And it gets better because he also sat down with 60 Minutes. He was asked, “What’s your priority in your second term?” And let me say, I’ve run for president, Miami, so I just want you to know it’s a good idea to have an answer to this question. It’s a good idea if you’re running for reelection to say, “Here’s what I want to accomplish.” What did Trump say? He got mad and walked out of the interview. He thought the questions were too tough, too tough. Miami, listen, if he can’t answer a tough question like, “What would you like to do in your second term,” then it’s our job to make sure he doesn’t get a second term. And that’s why over the next 10 days, we got to hard to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the next president and vice president of the United States.

I love the creative honking. It’s fantastic. Now, listen, you delivered twice for me, Florida. And now I’m asking you to deliver for Joe and deliver for Kamala. 12 years ago, when I chose the vice president, I didn’t know Joe that well. We served in the Senate together, but we come from different places, we’re part of different generations, but I quickly came to admire and love Joe as a man who early on learned to treat everybody with dignity and respect, somebody who lives by the words his parents taught him, “Nobody’s better than you, Joe, but you’re better than nobody.” And that sense of empathy, that sense of decency, the belief that every single person counts, that’s who Joe is. That’s who he’ll be.

And I can tell you the presidency doesn’t change who you are. It just reveals who you are. It amplifies who you are. And for eight years, I saw Joe up close. He was the last one in the room whenever I faced a big decision. He made me a better president. He’s got the character and experience to make us a better country. And he and Kamala are going to be in the fight, not for themselves, but for every single one of us. And that’s what you need right now, somebody who cares about you and is thinking about you. Listen, I understand that the president, he wants full credit for the economy he inherited and zero blame for the pandemic that he ignored. As a general rule, this is not a person who likes to take responsibility for anything. But the job doesn’t work that way.

Just like George said, tweeting on television doesn’t fix things. Inventing conspiracies don’t make people’s lives better. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to do the work. And along with the experience of getting things done, Joe Biden has concrete plans and policies that are going to turn our vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality. We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that showed them how to respond before a virus reached our shores. They must be lost along with the Republican healthcare plan. We can’t find them. Eight months into this pandemic, eight months into this pandemic, new cases are breaking records. Donald Trump isn’t going to suddenly protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself. There’s no sense that he’s coming up with a new approach, with a new plan. He doesn’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem.

Just this week, he complained that the pandemic was making him go back to work. If he’d been working in the first place, we would never have seen the situation get this bad. Listen, I have said this before, I am going to say it again.

Audience: (10:26)
That’s right.

This pandemic would have been tough for any president because we haven’t seen something like this in a hundred years. But the idea that somehow this White House has done anything but completely screw this thing up is nonsense. We can compare what happened in other countries to what happened in this one. So South Korea identified its first case at the same time as the US got its first case. Their per capita death toll… What that means is the number of people that died, let’s say, out of a hundred people, how many people died? Their death toll is 1.3% of what ours is. Nowhere near the number of people have died in South Korea because their government took care of business. Closer to home, Canada, their per capita death rate’s just 39% of what ours is. Their government, faced with a difficult situation, same pandemic, they said, “Let’s take the steps to minimize the damage and the harm to ordinary people, and…”

The damage and the harm to ordinary people and they save lives. So we can compare directly what happened in the United States and what happened somewhere else. What happens when a government is paying attention and what happens when the government is not. And then earlier this week when the president was asked would you do anything differently? Anything? He said, not much. Not the much. I mean, he couldn’t even acknowledge that maybe we should have taken some steps earlier to start testing people. Maybe we should have taken it more seriously and not pretended like it didn’t exist.

Maybe we shouldn’t have had the president get on television and say that if you put some bleach in you, that might clean things up. Just maybe that might’ve made a difference. The mismanagement would be comical and ridiculous if it didn’t mean people losing lives, if it didn’t mean the economy not recovering. And the pandemic has hit African Americans and Latinos harder than anybody in Florida. I bet you can think of some things you would’ve liked to see the government done differently. So just a baseline is that Joe and Kamala take this seriously.

Joe understands how much it hurts for grandparents to not be able to see their grandkids or hug each other. They understand that you can’t effectively economy moving again as long as people are afraid of getting a disease. He’s not going to screw up testing. He’s not going to call scientists idiots. He’s not going to host a super spreader event at the White House like the way this current president did. So Joe is going to get this pandemic under control with a plan that makes testing free and widely available, which we should have been doing months ago.

He’s going to get a vaccine to every American cost-free, and he’s going to make sure that our frontline heroes never have to ask other countries for the equipment that they need to keep themselves safe while they’re taking care of us. His plan will guarantee paid sick leave for workers and parents affected by the pandemic. And he’s going to make sure that the small businesses that hold our communities together and employ millions of Americans can reopen safely. Donald Trump likes to claim he built this economy. Some people actually give him credit for it.

Listen, America created 1.5 million more jobs in the last year of the Obama-Biden administration than in the first three years of the Trump-Pence administration. Unemployment was steadily going down during the Obama-Biden presidency and then he gets elected and it keeps on going down and suddenly he says, look what I did. Their first three years fell short of our last three and that was before he could blame the pandemic. He did inherit the longest streak of job growth in American history that we got started, but just like everything else he inherited, he fumbled it.

The economic damage he inflicted by botching the pandemic response means that Donald Trump will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to actually lose jobs. He loves talking about black unemployment, says he’s the best president for black folks since Abe Lincoln. What? Listen, black unemployment almost at 17% during the great recession 10 years ago and through a lot of hard work, Joe and I helped get it down to 7.8 by the time we left office and it just kept on going down, like all the other employment rate was going down not because Donald Trump did anything.

This year, it went way up, back to 17% right here in Florida, and he hadn’t had an answer for it. The only people truly better off than they were four years ago are the billionaires who got Trump tax cuts. Meanwhile, he won’t even extend relief to the millions of families who can’t pay the rent or put food on the table in this pandemic. And the fact that he can’t make that happen, that he won’t make that happen, it’s hard to understand because it’s not like it’s his money. He barely pays income taxes. He had no problem paying a ton of money in taxes to China from his secret Chinese bank account.

Hold up a second. Let me just see a show of hands. How many people here have secret Chinese bank accounts? Who’s got a secret Chinese bank account? His first year in the White House he only paid $750 in federal income tax. You got secretaries, you’ve got construction workers, you’ve got healthcare workers, nurses, who pay a lot more in income taxes than that. Listen, I’m not saying that like on tax day I’m just so happy about all the taxes I pay, but I pay more than $0.40 on every dollar I earn, so does Michelle. And we do it proudly because what I know is, is that this county has blessed me.

And that I want to make sure that folks like George can get a scholarship to go to college. I want to make sure that a senior properly taken care of. I want to make sure that we’re repairing roads and bridges and helping folks who need help and that our veterans are getting the disability rights that they have earned. I’m proud to contribute and to give back because I believe we’re all in this together as Americans, as one American family. But apparently that’s not how this man thinks. The thinks that’s for suckers, I guess.

But you know what, that’s not how we built this country. We built this country by looking out for one another and believing in one another. And that’s what Joe Biden believes. Joe Biden has got a plan to create 10 million good jobs in the energy sector, in the clean energy sector right here in America. And it’s part of his plan to protect Florida from climate change and secure environmental justice, and he’ll pay for it by rolling back Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires. And Joe sees this not as a moment not as a chance to get back to where we were, but to finally make some of the long overdue changes so that our economy actually makes life a little easier for everybody.

For the waitress trying to raise her kid on her own, for student figuring out how to pay for next semester’s classes, for the ship worker who’s worried about getting laid off, for the cancer survivor who’s worried that her preexisting condition protections will be taken away. Let’s talk about healthcare for a second because I know that George and I share something, we lost our mothers at a way too early age. Republicans love to say right before an election that they’ll protect your preexisting conditions. Now listen, Joe and I actually protected them 10 years ago with the Affordable Care Act, which made sure that anybody with a preexisting condition could get health insurance.

It protected everybody. It protected folks who already had health insurance. It protected folks who might have to buy health insurance in the future. Hispanics saw the biggest gains in coverage of anybody, almost 93% of Hispanic kids got covered, an all time high. And yet under this administration, Hispanic kids have lost coverage. And throughout this process, when we were getting folks healthcare, Republicans fought us every step of the way. They’ve tried to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare more than 60 times.

When they’re asked about it, they say, well, look, we’re going to have a great replacement. It’s coming. It’s going to be there in two weeks. It’s been 10 years now. Every two weeks they say they’ve got a replacement and they haven’t come up with nothing. They’ve never had a replacement. I promise you. I’ve asked. I asked back when I was president. I said, show me your replacement and we can talk. Nothing anda, zero, zilch, goose egg. The reason they don’t show you their plan to actually provide people protections when it comes to preexisting conditions because they don’t have one and they never have. And that’s just a fact. And instead of just fessing up that they don’t want people to have health insurance, they’ve attacked the Affordable Care Act at every turn. They’ve drove up costs. They’re driving up the uninsured. Now they’re trying to get the Supreme Court to take away your healthcare as we speak in the middle of a pandemic with nothing but empty promises to take its place. Why would you want to take people’s health insurance just at the very-

… want to take people’s health insurance just at the very moment when people need health insurance the most. What’s the rationale on that?

And think about what that would do to families right here. Miami-Dade has the highest enrollment of any county in Florida. Florida has the highest enrollment of any state in America. Nobody has a bigger stake in making sure those protections stay in place than folks right here in Florida.

Just this week, Trump flat-out said, “We hope the Supreme Court takes your health insurance away.” Said it out loud.

Miami, Joe and Kamala will protect your healthcare. They will expand Medicare. They will sign up more folks on Medicaid, and make insurance more affordable for everybody. That’s what they stand for. And that’s what you’ve got to get out there and vote.

Joe understands says that the first job of a president is to keep us safe from all threats: domestic, foreign, and microscopic. When the daily intelligence briefings are flashing warning lights about a virus, the president can’t be AWOL.

When Russia puts bounties on the heads of our brave soldiers in Afghanistan, the commander in chief can’t be MIA. He can’t be somebody who doesn’t read the briefings.

Joe Biden would never call the men and women of our military suckers and losers. He knows those troops are somebody’s husband, somebody’s wife, somebody’s kid, somebody’s [inaudible 00:25:48], somebody’s father.

When a hurricane devastates Puerto Rico, a president’s supposed to help it rebuild, not toss paper towels. Withholds billions of dollars in aid until just before an election.

We’ve got a president who actually suggested selling Puerto Rico. Believe it or not, it could have been worse. He once asked our national security officials if he could nuke hurricanes. I mean, at least he didn’t do that. A nuclear hurricane seems like it would have been [inaudible 00:26:36]. I mean, it would be funny if it wasn’t.

Look. Some of the rhetoric you’re hearing down here in South Florida, it’s just made up. It’s just nonsense. Listening to the Republicans, you’d think Joe was more Communist than the Castros. Don’t fall for that garbage, don’t fall for that okeydoke.

Joe Biden is not a socialist. He was a senator from Delaware. He was my vice president. I think folks would know if he’s a secret socialist by now.

What is true is he’ll stand up for ordinary people. What is true is he’ll stand up for workers. What is true is he’ll stand up for a higher minimum wage. What is true is he’ll stand up for affordable housing. What is true is he’ll promote human rights in Cuba and around the world. And he won’t coddle dictators the way our current president does.

Let me tell you something else about Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s tough. Something that you can’t really say about this president. He likes to act tough and talk tough. He thinks scowling and being mean is tough, and being rude is tough.

But when 60 Minutes and Lesley Stahl are too tough for you, you ain’t all that tough. You got to walk out of a 60 Minutes interview, then you’re never going to stand up to a dictator. If you’re spending all your time complaining about how mean reporters are to you, you’re not going to stand up to Putin.

Joe Biden will restore our [better 00:28:42] standing in the world, because he knows that our true strength comes from setting an example that the world wants to follow. A nation that stands with democracy, not dictators. A nation that can inspire and mobilize others to overcome threats like climate change and terrorism and poverty and disease. Here’s another thing. With Joe and Kamala at the helm, you won’t have to think about them every single day. There might be a whole day where they don’t be on TV. There might be a whole day where they don’t tweet some craziness. You won’t have to argue about them every day. It won’t be so exhausting. Just having a normal president.

You’ll be able to go about your lives, knowing that the president is not going to suggest injecting bleach, or retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world. Or claiming, or retweeting the claim, the Navy SEALS didn’t actually kill bin Laden.

We’re not going to have a president that goes out of his way to insult anybody who he doesn’t think is nice enough to him. We won’t have a president who threatens people with jail for just criticizing him. That’s not normal behavior, Florida.

You wouldn’t tolerate it from a co-worker. You wouldn’t tolerate it from a high-school principal. You won’t tolerate it from a coach. You wouldn’t tolerate it from a family member. Florida Man wouldn’t even do this stuff. Why are we accepting that from the President of the United States? It’s not normal behavior.

You shake your head and you think, “Well, you know what? That’s just him.” But there are consequences to this. There are consequences when a president behaves that way. It emboldens others to be mean and cruel. And divisive and racist. When you have a president who cannot call out or even criticize white supremacists, that’s a problem. That sends a bad message.

It frays the fabric of all of our lives. It affects the way our children see things. It affects the way that our families get along. It affects the way the world looks at America.

And in the meantime, it distracts us from the truly destructive actions that the cronies he’s placed all across the government are taking. Actions that are affecting your lives every single day, even when it’s not reported on. Even when you’re not paying attention to it.

The Environmental Protection Agency that’s supposed to protect our air and water; that’s run right now by energy lobbyists. That’s giving polluters free reign to dump unlimited poison into our air and water.

The Labor Department that’s supposed to protect workers, right now is run by a corporate lobbyist who’s declared war on workers, guts protections to keep essential folks safe during a pandemic. Makes it easier for big corporations to shortchange them on their wages.

The Interior Department that’s supposed to protect our public lands and wild spaces and wildlife for future generations, right now is run by an oil lobbyist who’s just fine selling that American treasure off to the highest bidder.

The Education Department that’s supposed to give every kid a chance. Amazing young people like [Jorge 00:32:54]. Right now that’s run by a billionaire who’s gutted the rules designed to protect students from getting ripped off by for-profit colleges, and stiff-arm students looking for loan relief in the middle of an economic collapse.

The person who’s running Medicaid right now is not trying to sign up more people for Medicaid to help them out. They’re trying to kick them off of Medicaid. So then they’ve got to fend for themselves at the very moment that they need protection the most. Here’s the thing. When Joe and Kamala are in charge, they’re not going to surround themselves with hacks and lobbyists. They’re going to surround themselves with qualified public servants who actually care about looking for you. Who are going to work hard to make sure that you’ve got a job that pays a living wage. And that your family is protected. And your health is protected. And you’ve got some security. And that we’re protecting our planet. And that, more than anything, is what separates them from their opponents. They actually care about every American. Even the ones who aren’t going to be voting for them. They’re going to be in the fight on your behalf every single day. They care about you, and they care about our democracy. Deeply.

They believe that in a democracy, the right to vote is sacred. We shouldn’t be making it harder for people to vote. We shouldn’t ask people to wait 10 hours to vote standing in line. We should be making it easy for everybody to cast their ballot.

Joe and Kamala believe that no one, especially the president, is above the law. They understand that protest isn’t un-American. Our country was founded on protest against injustice.

They understand we don’t threaten to throw political opponents in jail, just because we disagree with them. We don’t call them un-American just because they’re of another political party.

Joe and Kamala understand that our government works together to solve big problems like pandemic. It depends on more than just photo opps. It depends on more than just spin or making stuff up. It depends on a fidelity to science and logic and facts.

These are not Republican or Democratic values, Florida. These are American values. This is what we learned from our parents and our grandparents. They’re not black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim that.

We can’t just say, “Oh, it’s fine if a president lies 50 times a day.” No! My mother-

My mother would whoop me if I was lying once a day, once a week. These are American values that we have to reclaim. And in order to do that, we are going to have to turn out like never before. We have to leave no doubt, Florida. We can’t afford to be complacent. We can’t afford to sit back and wait for somebody else to do it. It’s on us. In this election, at this moment, we all have to do our part. And I understand why there are Americans who get frustrated by government, who sometimes feel that it doesn’t make enough of a difference. And I’m the first one to admit government’s not going to solve every problem.

Government is never going to be perfect. And in a country that right now is somewhat divided, there are going to be times where we don’t get everything we want even when we have folks in power that support what we care about. I’ve got experience first firsthand watching how Republicans in Congress abused the rules to make it easy for special interests to stop progress. But just, because government’s not perfect, it doesn’t mean we can’t make it better. And we sure can stop it getting worse. A President by himself can’t solve every challenge of the global economy, but if we elect a House and the Senate and a State House and a State Senate that are focused working people and getting you the help you need, it can make a difference and put millions of people back to work.

A President by himself can’t eliminate all racial bias in our criminal justice system, but if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and also, at the local level, district attorneys and state’s attorneys and sheriffs that are focused on equality and justice, we can make things better.

That what voting is about, not making things perfect, but making things better, putting us on track, getting the ball rolling so that we can look back years from now and say, “You know what? That was the moment when we turned the corner. That was the time when we started bringing the country together. That was when we, once again, began to move together to create a better future for our children, our grandchildren.” But it’s got to start now.

Voting is about using the power we have and pulling it together to get a government that’s more concerned, more responsive, more focused on you. And if we don’t get a hundred percent, we just get 50% of what we want, then that’s good. And then we keep on going, we vote some more, and we get more done. And that’s how progress is made. And what I hear folks say, “Well, voting doesn’t make a difference because I voted last time and, look.” Listen. We’ve never come close to seeing what it would be like if everybody actually voted. In 2008, that was the highest vote totals in recent elections, in modern presidential era. When I was running, we had the highest voting rates that we’ve seen. You know how many people out of the eligible folks who could vote voted? 61%. That was the highest. That means 39% of folks who were eligible to vote did not vote. Imagine if 65% of people voted. Imagine if 70% of people voted. Because the folks who tend not to vote, a lot of times, it’s black folks and brown folks and poor folks and young folks and women.

So imagine if all those folks actually turned out to vote and imagine January 20th, when we swear in a President and a Vice President who have a plan to get us out of this mess, who believe in science, who’ve got a plan to protect this planet for our kids, who care about working Americans, who are thinking about you. A President and a Vice President who believe in racial equality and are willing to do the work to bring us closer together, to bring us closer to the ideal where no matter what you look like, or where you come from, or who you love, or how much money you got, you can still make it if you try and you still get justice before the law. All that is possible. All that’s within our reach.

For all the times over the last four years that we’ve seen our worst impulses revealed, we’ve also seen what’s best in our country. People asked me, they said, “How’ve you been putting up with watching your successor to do all this stuff?” I say. “Yeah, it can be frustrating. I don’t watch a lot of TV.” But you know what I tell people is what I’ve also seen is folks of every age and background pack city centers and airports and town squares, just so that families wouldn’t be separated, or just so another classroom wouldn’t get shot up, or just so we can make sure our kids don’t grow up in an uninhabitable planet.

We’ve seen amazing essential workers and healthcare workers risk their lives day in and day out to help somebody, to save somebody else’s loved ones. We’ve seen people contribute and volunteer for those who are especially having a difficult time right now. We’ve seen Americans of all races joining together to declare in the face of injustice and brutality that black lives matter. No more, but no less to proclaim that no child in this country should ever feel the continuing stain of racism.

We see young people like George, who introduced me, ask us, “Do we not breathe the same air? Do we not bleed the same blood? Do we not deserve safety, belonging, and matter? That’s true in Miami and it’s true all across the country. I know this has been a tough and sometimes discouraging time, but I’m here to report to you, America is a good and decent place. We’ve just seen so much noise and nonsense, sometimes it’s hard for us to remember. But I’ve been all across this country. I’ve been all across this state. There are a lot of good people here. There are a lot of folks who share the values of looking out for one another and doing right by one another. We’ve just got to make sure that our politics were flexible. And we do that by voting.

Miami, I’m asking you to remember what this country can be. I’m asking you to believe in Joe’s ability and Kamala’s ability to lead this country out of these dark times and helps us build it back better. We can’t abandon the Americans who are hurting right now. We can’t abandon the kids who aren’t getting the education they need right now. We can’t abandon those protestors who inspired us this summer. We’ve got to channel their activism into action. We can’t just talk. We can’t just imagine a better future. We’ve got to go up there and fight for it. We’ve got to out hustle the other side. We’ve got to vote like never before and we’ve got to leave no doubt. So make a plan right now for how you’re going to get involved to vote. Do it as early as you can. Tell your family and friends how they can vote, too. Don’t stop with Joe and Kamala. Make sure you vote all the way down the ticket.

And if we pour all our efforts into these ten days, if we vote up and down the ticket like never before, we will elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And we will leave no doubt about what this country we love stands for and what we believe in and who we are as a people.

So let’s get to work, Florida. Let’s bring this home. I love you, Miami. Honk if you’re fired up. Honk if you’re ready to go. Are you fired up? Are you ready to go? Are you fired up? Are you ready to go? Let’s make this happen. Thank you, everybody. God bless.

(Singing).

Barack Obama Florida Rally Speech Transcript for Joe Biden October 24

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