Bill Clinton Campaigns for Harris and Walz

That’s cool.

(00:00)
I’m fired up. Fired up, and ready to go. Hello, everyone. My name is Devin Freeman. I’m a senior at the illustrious North Carolina Central University here in Durham and today, because my generation needs and deserves leaders who are looking out for our future. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are leaders that are fighting not only for me, my community, but also my generation. They have a vision for a new way forward. They will protect our fundamental freedoms, create economic opportunities and preserve our democracy. Now, as Vice President, we know Kamala Harris has already been fighting for our people. Just like myself, she is a proud HBCU alum. She knows that our state’s HBCUs are important cultural and educational institutions that drive innovation, research and economic ability.

(02:02)
Vice President Harris, alongside President Biden, have invested a record $17 billion in our nation’s HBCUs, and delivered one of the largest increases in the Pell Grant program on over a decade. Now meanwhile, Donald Trump would be a disaster for students. We have to realize, his Project 2025 agenda for a second term includes extreme plans to eliminate the Department of Education, and then also take away from the Head Start program, diverting funding away from public schools and rescinding student loan forgiveness programs. The economists agreed that his plan would hurt the economy and raise costs, which is not something my peers and I want to deal in this generation.

(03:12)
When we talk about it, the members of my generation want leaders with a vision for the future, one where we’re all able to achieve our version of the American dream. With Vice President Harris, we know that she is fighting to give us more opportunities to make it easier to get an education, to make it easier to get a good paying job and to start a small business. When we talk about it, Vice President Harris selected her running mate. She picked a leader who shares her vision for a new way forward, and he has always been fighting for working people and students like myself.

(04:20)
Now, Governor Walz has a heart for service that I admire and try to emulate, whether in the classroom, in the Army National Guard or on the football field, in Congress or as governor, we see Tim Walz is someone who has spent every day trying to make a difference for the American people. Let me tell you a few things that he has done as governor. He has signed the largest tax cut in Minnesota’s history, lowered the cost for the middle class families, stood up for our fundamental freedoms, just to name so many of his accomplishments. Now, today’s the day North Carolina. Early voting starts today, and I am proud to have voted. I voted today, as you all should vote today.

(05:21)
Everyone here, we know the path to the White House runs through North Carolina. Everyone here, we know has the power to make their voice heard, and to turn the page to eliminate the extremists of Donald Trump and JD Vance. This election, North Carolina, is simple. It’s to get ready to elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to be ready to be those candidates to fight for our freedoms, also to build a better economy. When we have their back, they have our back. And now, it is my great honor to introduce the governor, our next Vice President, from Minnesota, Tim Walz.

That was fantastic.

I’ll see you guys later.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Durham. We’re in the right spot, aren’t we, in the middle of the gym? Well, I don’t know about all of you. We’re going to get through this election, have President Harris when we’re done with this thing, but I’ve got to tell you, listening to Devin, our future is bright. You see it here. Our future is bright. Now, I am going to admit, I’m a little partial to governors, or former governors, but I’ve got to tell you, North Carolina, you saw it over these last challenging weeks, Roy Cooper is an absolute gem. You grow them well down here, because those are pretty big shoes to fill, but I’ll tell you what, Josh Stein’s going to do just fine doing that. I don’t know about all of you, I’m still a little bit giddy here. I’m standing on the stage with the 42nd President of the United States. This is the Comeback Kid. This is a guy who knows a little bit of something about being an underdog and being underestimated a bit. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody that understands politics or the American people better than Bill Clinton. He’s been a leader. He understands what it takes to win these campaigns, and he gives of his time because what he understands, just like all of you understand, you came here today and President Clinton came here today because you believe in the promise of American and you love this country. That’s why you came. I’m just glad that President Clinton and all of you are out here to make the case why we need to elect Kamala Harris the next President of the United States.

(08:48)
I want to say before we get started here, and I bring this to you from across the country and certainly from Minnesota, the eyes of the country have been upon all of you. Our hearts are breaking watching. We know there’s folks that lost loved ones, lost everything they had. The communities are still in the moments of recovery. I want you to know, and you’ve seen it, the Biden-Harris Administration are doing everything they possibly can to get the relief to these areas to get it done. It’s at times like these that it brings out the best of our country. This is what it looks like to be unified. We’re going to have a choice in 19 days to decide to go down a road that Donald Trump wants to take us down of chaos and division, or Kamala Harris’ vision of a United States that cares about each and every one. We’re trying. We’re going everywhere. Kamala and I are going everywhere. Between the two of us, we’re about regulars on Fox News now, but Donald Trump’s not going many places, and there’s a reason why.

(10:00)
He finally came out yesterday, and he did a little town hall on Univision. I don’t know if some of you saw this. He got pressed and asked, I wouldn’t call them hard questions. I would ask them honest questions. They asked him, why are you and JD Vance making up stories about people who are in this country legally, putting them at risk, spreading disgusting, untrue stories about folks in Springfield, Ohio, Aurora, Colorado? That’s what he’s been doing. It tells you just about everything you need to know about this. These lies that they’re saying, Republican officials are telling them to stop it, and then they tell lies about the Republican officials who tell them to quit telling lies, because that’s who they are. But look, let’s be honest, there are outsiders coming into communities, stealing and moving jobs away and making life harder for people living there, and they have names: Donald Trump and JD Vance. That’s who they are, that is who’s going there. Now, yesterday was an epiphany day. If you remember back a couple of weeks ago, we had a little debate in New York City, and I asked the simplest question that you could ever be asked as an American. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Pretty simple. Every court in the land, every person knows this, and on that night, I got a smug, non-response to it that, “Tim, we’re thinking about the future,” or something like that. Well yesterday, they just start saying the quiet stuff outside. He got asked about it yesterday, and he said, “No, Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.”

(11:40)
Now, the job that we’re asking for, to serve the American public, we don’t serve an individual. We serve the Constitution and the people of the United States, that’s who we serve. JD Vance made it clear, his fealty is to Donald Trump, not the people of this community or any community across the country. But look, here’s the good news. He is never going to be vice president, and Donald Trump is never going to be president. You can say no to them and yes to Kamala Harris and a unified country, a new way forward. I love it when Kamala Harris talks about this, a kid who grew up in Oakland, a single mom, and a kid who grew up in rural Nebraska, middle class folks. The one thing we understand about this is, the economy works best when it’s fair and it’s focused on the middle class.

(12:47)
Now, that seems pretty simple to most of us, but not to these guys. She’s got a plan that we’re laying out, and we’re talking about it very clearly. I’ve been talking to the media, she’s been talking to everyone. We’re going to rural Pennsylvania and laying out a plan for rural America, and we’re being clear about this. Let’s talk about some of the things that are in there. 100 million Americans under Kamala Harris as president will see a tax cut focused at them. You heard Devin say that I passed the largest tax cut in Minnesota history, not for the rich, but for the middle class. They didn’t get a tax cut at the top. They’re doing just fine. Look, this idea of price gouging and cost of pharmaceuticals, I hope this is sinking into people, you saw it down here and we saw it in Florida.

(13:38)
A hurricane’s coming, and all of a sudden, airline prices went way up. That’s not capitalism, that’s price gouging. That’s unfair. That’s not right. For insulin, capping it at $35, that’s life and death. There’s a young man in Minnesota named Alex Smith. Alex Smith aged out of his parents’ insurance at 26, which we need to keep the ACA, so you can stay on it to then. Alex started rationing his insulin, and he ended up dying from it. His mom had to come to the state capitol and say, “I will not leave here until we fix this, so nobody else loses their son for $35 of medicine that costs $5 to manufacture,” five bucks.

(14:26)
Now, I’m very excited. We’ve got a pretty young crowd here, and that’s good. Now, those of you that look like me, a little less hair, a little gray, I will tell all of you, though, you don’t start really thinking about Medicare or Social Security until you see what it does, the greatest anti-poverty programs this country has ever seen. Kamala Harris, put forward a proposal here a week ago that is transformational. When you get to be 60, you start paying attention to Medicare, trust me on this, because healthcare costs can bankrupt you. Kamala Harris put out a plan that says, especially for rural communities across this country, Medicare will start paying for home healthcare, so our seniors can stay in their homes longer.

(15:24)
Whether it’s affordability on college or whether it’s young folks and the rest of us trying to buy a home, building 3 million more affordable homes and down payment assistance to let people get in those homes, the down payment is what keeps us out of the homes. By doing the tax credit and allowing it to go forward, more people can buy homes across this country. Those of you who want to be your own boss, $50,000 tax credit to start your own businesses, and we’ll get it [inaudible 00:15:55]. President Clinton probably remembers this. We had an incredible senator from Minnesota who we lost in a plane accident way too young named Paul Wellstone, and Paul Wellstone taught us a lot of things, but Paul Wellstone simplified the economy and made things so clear to this with a saying he had. He said, “It’s just simple, folks. We all do better when we all do better.”

(16:23)
That’s what we’re talking about. We know some folks have a tough go at it. Things get difficult for some folks. That’s why earlier this week, the Vice President put out and released an agenda, An Opportunity for Black Men. Look, there’s no denying in this country that there are historical and systemic barriers put up that stopped people. There is no reason that home ownership rates for Black families and White families should be so different, because that’s generational wealth that cheats the next generation. We know that.

(16:56)
When we talk about these proposals, we need to make sure, certainly the housing and all that, but specifically targeting access to capital for Black entrepreneurs to start their own business is an absolute key. Making sure we’re targeting job training and apprenticeship programs to communities so that folks can get the skills they need, the capital they need to be their own bosses or to work in the industries that make you in the middle class, that’s an agenda that’s out there. And look, our laws have taken a disproportionate impact on certain communities, and certainly the Black community, laws around cannabis have disproportionately impacted and set back folks in those communities. When we in Minnesota talk about this, and Kamala talks about the country, legalizing recreational cannabis, but make sure that the community that was most negatively impacted gets the first shot to make money in those industries, those are the ones that make a difference.

And let’s us start saying the quiet part out loud about Donald Trump of where he’s been. JD Vance said it. JD Vance is the one who said this. He said, “Well, the voters don’t really like the racist part of Trump.” I didn’t say it, he said it. He knows him best. But look, when Donald Trump is talking about bringing back Stop-and-frisk policies and things like that, those are harassment that went onto the black community, specifically black males and put a disproportionate number of them into incarceration and set back an entire generation. We are not going back to those policies. We are not going back.

We’re not going back, we’re not going back, we’re not going back.

You know, they want to make false choices. Let’s be very clear here. Public safety and civil rights can go hand in hand. You don’t have to choose one over the other. But I want to be fair. Not everybody thinks the same way. [inaudible 00:19:01] and Donald Trump and JD Vance have a little bit different ideas. And I’ll tell you what, they know exactly what they’re doing with Project 2025. I was telling President Clinton, “Donald Trump today is coming out. He’s pretty worried about this.” He said, “No one associated with Project 2025 will be in my administration.” Every one of them were in his administration. Every one of them. JD Vance says, “I don’t even know what that is.” He wrote the foreword to the architect’s book. He wrote it. I’ve never written the foreword to somebody’s book, but if I did, I’d sure the hell remember who they were. And they wrote that thing. I guarantee you that.

(19:33)
So look, here’s what’s in that thing. Here’s what’s in it. Take away the Affordable Care Act and look, this is the time now to talk to your neighbors, hell talk to your relatives who are voting the other way, or your brother, whoever it might be. We all got them. But they will tell you, “Well, I just don’t like Donald Trump’s character, or some of the things he says. I like his policies.” This is where you jump in and say “Which policies? Taking away your healthcare.” He said he had a concept of a plan after nine years. Then Vance tried to explain it. I told JD, “You should go back to the concept because your explanation is terrible about what it’s going to do.”

(20:08)
Because the ACA was transformational because it protects us with pre-existing conditions. Because you don’t have to be a business genius to understand. Insurance companies want to charge you premiums, and then what they’d really like to do is not have to pay out from that. One way to do that is only insure healthy people and let the sick people, as Donald Trump would say, “Just get along however you can.” That doesn’t work. You create the pools together where all of us have an opportunity to get basic human rights of healthcare to be able to stay healthy.

(20:48)
Donald Trump called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. JD Vance said it was the impediment or the roadblock to fiscal sanity. Social Security doesn’t add to our national debt and we sure pay into it. So when my dad dies and I’m a teenager, I got a little brother in elementary school, a stay-at-home mom, it was Social security survivor benefits that kept our family alive, kept us going on it. That’s smart.

(21:16)
So look, we hear this, and this is a tough state. We know how to do this stuff. So when they tell you, “Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, damn happy to do it. We just didn’t have any boots. So social security is the boots. I guarantee you, if I would’ve had $400 million, I would be in better shape than he is and wouldn’t be bankrupt.

(21:40)
I listened to two business interviews with this guy. I have met no one in my life that has less business acumen than Donald Trump. So put an end to that myth. Because this guy is trying to convince the entire world because nobody, he and JD believe it. His tariffs are a sales tax on everything we buy that will cost your family $4,000. Don’t let him skate by and say, “Oh, China will pay for it.” Yeah, just like Mexico will pay for the wall. We’ll see how that… Not going to happen. Not going to happen. So be very clear. He doesn’t know business and he damn sure doesn’t know the middle class. So look.

(22:17)
And for all of you, I’m going to be generous. We are all products of our past. When you grow up a middle class kid in Oakland or in Butte, Nebraska, you care about social security, you care about these things. When you’re sitting down in Mar-a-Lago, and you tell your rich friends, “You’re rich as hell, I’m going to give you a tax cut”, it doesn’t matter to them. And you know what? When my mom looks for that social security deposit to be made in her bank account, that’s how she’s going to feed herself. That’s how she’s going to get things done. He doesn’t give a damn if his social security check comes or not. So let’s be very clear if any of our relatives or anyone gives us this, if they tell us, “Well, Donald Trump’s understand us”, that’s bullshit. He does not understand. He does not understand.

(23:02)
Look, you know it. All right for the little ones here, I’m a teacher. I’m sorry about that. [inaudible 00:23:18]. Look, you know what we’ve got here. This issue, you’ve got it up on here. It’s about freedom. It’s about freedom. And I’ll leave you with this. The freedom for women to make their own healthcare decisions. The freedom to drink clean water and breathe clean air. Those are [inaudible 00:23:43]. And I say this as a teacher and as a parent, the freedom to send your little ones to school in their best clothes so that they can go learn and be kids and not be shot dead in their classroom.

(23:58)
I’m taking nothing on this. I’m a veteran. I’m a hunter. I went pheasant hunting last weekend. I own firearms. Kamala Harris owns firearms. This might be the, I don’t know, President Clinton. This might be the first time that both Democrats on the ticket are gun owners right now. And it might also be the first time that the guy on the other side can’t pass a background check because he has felonies. Look, there’s another reason stakes in this election are so high, and you know it. Some of you hear this from folks in your life. “We made it through the first term of Trump. We could probably make it through another.” I am an eternal optimist. I survived over a decade supervising the high school lunchroom. I’m an optimist. I am an optimist, but I genuinely worry for the democracy of this country. There is one political party now that is pro-democracy, and that’s us right now. That’s the truth. So all things aside, this is truly serious. And I say this because someone I deeply respect, General Mark Milley, he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The top military official under Donald Trump. And Mark Milley doesn’t have time to mince words. This is a hero who’s been out there and wore the uniform for over 30 years. He told us on the record that he believes Donald Trump is fascist to the core. Trump’s plan to seize unprecedented power for himself isn’t hypothetical. It’s written down in Project 2025. And the rest is coming right from his mouth.

(25:42)
Last week, one of Trump’s closest buddies who he pardoned, Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and he’s a contender to be that job again in the White House. He was asked point blank if he would lead military tribunals to carry out executions if Trump wins again. Mike Flynn answered, “We have to win first.” He followed up that to make sure that we understood just how batshit crazy he was. He said, “The gates of hell”, Mike Flynn’s saying this, “My hell will be unleashed.” This is the guy that Donald Trump wants to hand the keys to the federal government over to on security.

(26:43)
So look, if there’s anybody in your life who really meant when Donald Trump said he called for a bloodbath after this election, if they think he’s just talking, I have to you this. You remember 2016, you remember the way he talked. This is not that Trump even. This is something much more deranged, something much more desperate, maybe to stay out of prison. And with JD Vance there, there are no guardrails around him. You know how he will vote. So look, Lord knows Republicans in Congress won’t have the courage to stand up to him.

Never!

So there’s one way to stop it. We need to go vote and win the election and make sure none of this ever happens. Look, hundreds of Republicans out with Kamala campaigning. Who would’ve ever thought we would see Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift on the same ticket. There you go. So look, we got to do what Americans do on this. That rhetoric has no place. That is the language of dictators. That is the language of totalitarianism. We need to go to the polls, clean his clock and win this thing. So here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. I’m going to finish because you’re here for the main event. But I want to leave enough time that if you don’t have one of those stickers on, go vote and get one today. Today. If you’re not registered, you can register today and vote today. That’s what you can do. And if you’re going to vote by mail, do that today too and get it in.

(28:37)
So look, follow the instructions carefully because these guys want to do whatever they can to throw out ballots. If you need to, you know what you need to do. Iwillvote.com/NC will tell you exactly where to go, how to do it, how to fill out your ballot and how to get it done. Go knock doors, go make phone calls. Talk to your brother, tell him to quit voting the other way. If you want to KamalaHarris.com, give a buck or two knowing that in these battleground states, it lets us build out and get things like this going.

(29:11)
So here’s the thing, I’m going to turn it over to somebody whose accent might be closer to yours. A son of the South. Speaking like a Midwesterner, a son of the South. A Governor. A governor who went, someone who understood small town. And I will say this. As someone who named his daughter Hope, the man from Hope who brought us that. All the changes that make a difference, please join me in welcoming our 42nd president, Bill Clinton.

(29:55)
Sorry about that.

Whoa. Thank you. Let’s give him a hand.

(29:55)
I just have one thing to say off the bat. To people who say on the other side that Kamala Harris is an unknown quantity, a dangerous radical.

Can’t hear you.

Can you hear now?

Yes!

So all these critics of our candidate, Kamala Harris, they often say, “Well, she’s an unknown quantity. She’s a dangerous, radical”, whatever. The first decision she made was Tim Walz. I think she did pretty good. It says a lot about what kind of president she’ll be. First decision Donald Trump made was JD Vance.

Boo!

Who now has defied countless courts full of judges, many of whom Trump appointed to say “No, he didn’t lose in 2020.”

We’re not Hillary.

Poor baby. The whole thing was rigged. And he had the gall to say in his debate with Tim that he didn’t want to destroy the healthcare bill with its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. He was just trying to make it more sound. That was a whopper. And there are probably 30% of the people in this audience, maybe more who have family or certainly friends who would be affected if we got rid of the protection against charging people with pre-existing conditions more. That reason alone should be enough to defeat the Trump ticket in North Carolina and in America.

(32:25)
So I really like Tim Walz. He spent his whole life serving his community and our country. He’s made a positive difference in every role he’s ever played. He left a rewarding career as a teacher and a coach, but he didn’t leave his roots behind. He told me that his old football team just won against its archrival and he went home and checked on it. In the middle of this election. He was in the National Guard for 24 years. He represented a rural congressional district that had elected only one other Democrat in more than a century. They trusted him. And after he flipped it blue, he proved that you can compromise without compromising your values to make the system work again. He worked across the aisle on the Farm Bill on veterans issues. Aren’t you sick of all this bad-mouthing sliming talk that dominates American politics today?

Yes!

He proved it doesn’t have to be this way. Look at his record as Governor. He’s done unbelievable things for working families, especially for those that have children. He’s given the biggest tax cuts in Minnesota history, paid leave, free school meals.

Yeah!

And I could have sat here for another hour listened to him talk because he reminds me of home. Let’s cut to the chase. I don’t know how many more elections I’ll be involved with, and I’m too old to gild a lily. Heck, I’m only too months younger than Donald Trump. But good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth to music. I played enough music, I will not clap off beat nor will I pretend to be a conductor. Because we got a race to win and we have to win it. I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I can honestly say that this time I’m not here running for anything anymore except for my grandchildren’s future.

Yeah!

Now you just heard what Tim Walz said. So think about this when I describe what the decision is before North Carolina and the country. A presidential election is just a great job interview for the most important job in the world.

And since you do the hiring, you have to decide what the criteria for the job are. And in effect, the American people make that decision every presidential election over and over and over. So how do you decide? What questions will you ask? Here are the questions that I hope you’ll ask. Which candidate will take us forward? Which will take us backward? Which will give our children a broader future or a darker, more uncertain one? Which will make us more united, and which will relish in every new division? Which will make us all feel heard and seen regardless of who we vote for. And when the election’s over, will we all live under the same set of rules? That’s a big deal in the democracy. It is not just about who gets the most votes. It’s what rules do you play by when it’s over. He’s got a Supreme Court that virtually said once you get to be president, you can just make up the rules.

(37:28)
And he keeps talking about how he wants to get even and may have to call out the military on our own people. The danger within. I suppose that includes me. And I mean basically, he’s asserted the right to go after anybody that he thinks, in his wisdom, is a threat. You sign a… The oath says, you promise to preserve, protect, and defend constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And he said, “I think I’ll start with domestic. Bring me the army. Now, I used to like President Clinton. I once said only he and Ronald Reagan were a great presidents since World War II, but I’ve had a change of heart, and I think he needs to go away for a long time. And I’m not going to execute him, although I could under the Supreme Court’s ruling, but I think I’ll just send him to the Colorado supermax for the rest of his life.” So I’ve already got a petition ready. I want him to transfer me to Guantanamo. Because when you’re 78, you’re a lot more worried about it being too cold than being too hot. We’re laughing about this.

(39:16)
But let me tell you something. Being president is a sacred duty. And the sheer joy I had every day, I’ll never be able to repay all of you for. Even the terrible days when they were trying to tear my head off, there was always something good you could do for someone. And The idea that we should give in to grievance and resentment and score settling… Even my mother used to say that my greatest weakness as a politician is I could never remember who I was supposed to be mad at. But when you get a job like that, you are supposed to do your best to be fair to everybody and try to do something that’s good for everybody. That’s what the job says. That’s what the Constitution says. That’s what you mean, I think, by forming a more perfect union. It doesn’t say, “We the people of the United States, in order to take up sides and bash the living hell out of the other side and tear them to pieces.” It says we are supposed to form a more perfect union.

(40:54)
And I can tell you, and I know both the candidates pretty well, I think Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race who has the vision, the experience, the temperament, and yes, the will to do that on good and bad days. One of the things I find most interesting about Donald Trump, which has surprised me as someone who’s known him over the years, during times when we had a perfectly cordial relationship and he was nice to me until he decided Hillary should be locked up for her email practices, which his own State Department later said… Remember that? That was the biggest issue when she ran. His own State Department later said she sent out exactly zero confidential emails and receive exactly zero, and somehow he was able to make that the biggest issue in 2016.

(42:06)
But anyway, he now makes us all listen to his personal grievances and these kind of crazy conspiracy theories. And his buddy Congresswoman Green the other day said that the deep state had now perfected the ability to direct tornadoes and hurricanes. Remember? So that instead of what usually happens is that Eastern North Carolina is hit, Western, more red North Carolina was hit as if we did that on purpose. And they want people to believe that. I remember when I was a young man, I fell in love with Thomas Wolfe’s novels, and I read all of them. And I couldn’t wait for the chance to go to Asheville. And it is a beautiful place. And when I was younger, I played that Grove Park, a golf course that President Woodrow Wilson played in. The idea that anyone would willfully destroy a treasure like that or hurt people in a part of the state or the nation because of their politics is appalling.

(43:33)
But I am sure now, there are people who believe it. What happened? We lost our local newspapers. We lost our locally owned radio stations, and everything was supplanted by the most extreme social media sites and our friends on Fox News. By the way, she did a good job with Brett Barrett. So one of the things that bothers me is that when somebody starts grinding on somebody else and saying how bad they are and how awful they are, they never really tell you the full story. Certainly, Mr. Trump doesn’t. And he doesn’t have any plans. This is the most important thing for you, to actually solve the problems that he moans about, because solutions and getting along better with your neighbors are bad for his brand. Isn’t that right? You don’t have to count the lies. You can just count the eyes. Sun came up this morning, I made it happen.

(44:59)
It rained yesterday. If I had been president, it never would’ve happened. It’s always about him. One reason I want Kamala Harris is, it will be about you. Number two, Kamala Harris wants to go forward, not backward. She doesn’t want to waste any time talking about all this stuff that we can get a lot of laughs about. Look at inflation, the economy. I know a little something about this. I did have that job for eight years and we had the longest peacetime expansion in history. We had the first balanced budget in 30 years, the first three surpluses in a row in 70 years. I was pretty tight with the dollar. We paid 600 billion down on the national debt.

(46:12)
But you got to know when to invest, when to save, and you can’t pretend that all spending is the same. If you look at the candidates’ plans, the Trump plan is more than twice as expensive as the Harris plan, and it will help way less than half the people that the Harris-Walz plan will help because their plan goes mostly to help already wealthy people and big corporations who both don’t need it and won’t necessarily invest it in what does work, which is growing the middle class and giving poor folks a chance to work their way into it.

(46:59)
So why aren’t we voting for the Democrats? Well, a lot of people say, well, there’s been too much inflation. That’s right. When COVID happened and the economy of the world shut down, it broke the supply chains. And when the supply chains are broken, then the demand for goods for a while as much higher than the available supply. When the demand’s here and the supply’s here, the price forces a raise. That happened everywhere in the world. Now what happened? The administration, the President Biden and all of his economic team and Vice President Harris, they’ve been trying to get the inflation rate down. And it’s been going down for three years. And finally, the federal Reserve has lowered interest rates, which is going to drive it down more. So there’s still some residual inflation that we all have questions about, especially in food prices and fuel prices.

(48:13)
Now, here’s how that works. If you look at the grocery business nationwide. There are still quite a large number of independent grocery stores, especially in smaller places, but they have to buy from a relatively limited number of suppliers. And then there’s the problem of concentration in larger places of huge grocery stores with massive numbers of customers having a big share of the market. They often have what sounds like a low profit margin, 3 or 4%. But if you’ve got millions of customers, you can make a ton of money with that kind of profit margin. And the difference of 1% might be enormous, and all the burden of that 1% might come off people buying meager groceries every week to stay alive. That’s why most states have anti-price gouging laws. But we always left it to the states before. And the grocery business has been changing before our very eyes. They’re getting more and more concentrated. And that’s why Kamala Harris became the first presidential candidate ever to say, “We need a national price gouging law.”

(49:40)
And Bob Casey, the senator from Pennsylvania, has already introduced one. You have them in blue states and red. We might be able to get a big bipartisan vote for this, but we won’t get it if they don’t get it in Congress and we don’t have a president standing behind it. And once the Justice Department has the power to look into these things, prices may start to drop a little bit. Might not ever have to find the lawsuit because that’s the way the world works. If you think you’re free to do whatever you want, it’s different than if you have to think about whether the law will come down on you. So this is just one example, but she’s in this looking for a practical solution to a big problem for people who are doing their best to run independent grocery stores and people doing their best to find food for their families at reasonable prices at stores of any size. And so I hope you’ll think about that. I hope you’ll talk to your neighbors about that. We just started this early voting. It’s not too late to talk to people. But it’s crazy for, I think, unfair… I’ll back off of crazy. They use that word too much. It’s unfair to pretend that we could have been the only country in the world that would’ve escaped this inflation problem, and she’s actually trying to do something about it. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is she’ll help working families by another big increase in the earned income tax credit up to 3,600 a year. And I know this will work, and it’ll be $6,000 in the first year of a [inaudible 00:52:05] life, because there are often problems, healthcare problems. I know this will work because I doubled it when I was president. And it was the beginning of that, and we started with the first family tax credit with… It was only about $500 a child then. But that was back in the dark ages when I served. But together, those things moved 8 million people and working families from poverty into the middle class. This will work. And since we started on this road, child poverty has gone down almost 60%. And if we enact what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to do, it’ll be cut in half again. The guys on the other side talk a lot about family values, but I think how your children live, eat, get medical care, and handle the responsibilities that they impose upon their parents, I think those were very important family values. So what does Donald Trump want to do? His economic plan basically amounts to more tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. He does impose tariffs across the board, and all the surveys

… surveys show that that’s kind of popular because he sounds like he’s zapping foreigners. Here’s the problem: if you double tariffs on stuff that we don’t make here but you have to buy, all you’re doing is raising the price of stuff we have to buy. Doesn’t create any jobs for anybody, it doesn’t start… it’s not like the CHIPS bill, where President Biden got the support to start manufacturing computer chips in America for national security and economic reasons. This is just stuff. Anything. Buying pencils for your kids to go to school with, whatever.

(54:47)
If you do that, it amounts to a sales tax on every family. These tariffs will hurt lower and middle income families the most because most Americans spend a larger percentage of their income on goods and services, the very things that we don’t produce here, than others. So the economists say Trump’s would cost middle class families about $4,000 a year. And by raising the price of essentials like gas, medicine, and prescription drugs, which also he wants to do, it’ll become worse. Please talk to your friends about that. And then there’s the jobs issue. We’re about to finish the four-year term which has produced more jobs than any four-year term in the history of the United States of America.

Thank you, Joe.

Yeah.

Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!

And it’s kind of rich hearing Trump talk about how bad the economy is under Biden when he’s the only president to lose more jobs than were created since the Great Depression.

Yeah.

He will complain, “That’s not fair because look at what I had to go through with COVID.” But he inherited a booming economy and had the great good luck that most voters didn’t feel it yet, because there’s often about a three-year lag between when something good or bad happens and when people feel it. But already, before COVID happened, the job growth under Trump was down from President Obama’s last two years. So he wants you to believe, like I said before, this about, ” A whole different world started when I took office and, boom, everything got great,” when in fact the job growth’s been going down.

(57:10)
So Democrats do know how to create jobs. Since the end of the Cold War, about 51 million new jobs have been created by the private sector. 50 million under the Democrats. Now, if Tim Walz were still out here he would tell you, “If you’re ahead 50-1, you’re winning.” So if you vote for Tim Walz and Kamala Harris, they’ll run up to score even more.

Yeah.

It’s the same thing with healthcare. As I said, the Republicans with Donald Trump’s support, both before and during the time he was president, voted 60 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now he says he still wants to repeal it, but he will replace it with concepts of a plan. Meanwhile, you’ve got to pay the healthcare bills. If I came to you with concepts of a plan, you’d tell me to take a hike. Concepts of a plan mean you’re going to lose the protections for pre-existing conditions.

Yes.

You’re going to lose much of the freedoms that we have and the options we have. And I don’t care what they say. They are coming after the right to choose if they win.

Yes.

So what’s going to happen? The limits on insulin pricing will be gone. The $2,000 limit a year for seniors will be gone. Harris and Walz want to get rid of the age limit and bring those limits down to other people. We know that a lot of these people are selling medicine for astronomically more than it cost them to make it. So if you want to spend more for less, pay more for prescription drugs, take the safety net away, create a more calamitous world for you and your family, you got a good choice there. Trump is waiting for you.

(59:59)
Now look, don’t take all this from me. You could say, “Oh, he’s just being so partisan.” Look at his own vice president, members of his cabinet, prominent Republican members of Congress, Military leaders, well over 100 people who were in his own administration who will not endorse him because they say Kamala Harris will honor the Constitution and give us a good, normal life and build on our strengths, and he will not.

(01:00:46)
He wants four more years of chaos, four more years of the blame game. We want a leader who will take us to buckle down, to solve problems, to seize the opportunities, to give us a stronger middle class with greater ability for more people to work their way into it.

Yes.

We want to do things, and we’re tired of wasting time talking about crowd sizes. We want more affordable housing, more affordable healthcare. You heard what Governor Walz said about the housing. More affordable childcare, more financing for small businesses, stronger alliances for freedom and democracy around the world, including in Ukraine.

Yes.

And we want peace in the Middle East that secures Israel’s future and gives the Palestinians a right to a homeland. That’s what we want. We want to lead through cooperation. And we’re not too interested in hearing about the great, late Hannibal Lecter or the very real wishes of President Putin and the President of North Korea. Folks, it’s dangerous. We’re all having fun. I want you to have a good time, but this is really serious.

[inaudible 01:02:48].

Here’s what I know: for 250 years now we have always been divided. Benjamin Franklin’s only son was the royal governor of New Jersey and was never reconciled with his father. You can’t get over every conflict, but we got a constitution which specified how they were all going to be handled, and basically could be subtitled Let’s Make A Deal. Majority rule, minority rights, individual rights, the rule of law, and all of us living under the same rules.

(01:03:35)
Somehow we’ve kept hope alive. We’ve kept marching together. We should not despair about these divisions. We have to do something about it. We have to. That’s the chance we’ve got again now. We ought to reach out a hand to our neighbors, those that agree with us and those who don’t. But we should realize that, more than ever before in my lifetime, the fundamental protections of the Constitution, majority rule, minority rights, individual rights, the rule of law, same set of rules applying to everybody. Those things are in great danger.

(01:04:34)
And I’m telling you, I think it is an enormous opportunity that we’ve been given to elect Kamala Harris.

Yes. Yes.

I think she is clearly up to the job. Tim Walz is clearly up to the job.

Yes.

They will bring us together and move us forward. Will everything be perfect overnight? Will everything be hunky-dory? Will you agree with everything they do? No. This is the real world. You seldom get a chance to do as much good for as many people with one decision. So go out there and win this, because your country needs you. Your families need you. Future generations need you.

Yeah!

Yeah!

So starting today, all those people that wanted to stop early voting. And take advantage of the chance to vote early and then spend the rest of the time all way to the Election Day taking other people to the polls.

Yes.

This election, a lot of people need a plan to vote. They need help voting. We have so much hay in the barn. There is not another country on the face of this earth that is better positioned for the next 20 years than the United States. Not one. But we’ve been through so much turmoil, so much trouble. We’ve still got some people with PTSD from COVID. This has been tough on people. You’ve got to take a deep breath and push this thing over the finish line. I’m telling you, you can do it.

(01:06:44)
So thank you.

Thank you!

On behalf of my grandchildren and yours, if you have them, there’s a lot on the line. So far, for more than 250 years, everybody that’s bet against America has lost money. Don’t let them down. Don’t let the future down. Don’t let the kids down. Don’t let the prospect that we actually might learn to live together and learn from each other and have fun again with our differences instead of being killing each other over them. You can do it.

That was terrific [inaudible 01:07:54].

Taught to fear Jesus in a small town. Used to daydream in that small town. Another boring romantic, that’s me. But I’ve seen it all in a small town. Had myself a ball in a small town. Married an L.A. doll and brought her to this small town. Now she’s small town just like me.

(01:07:35)
No, I cannot forget from where it is that I come from. I cannot forget the people who love me. Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town and people let me be just what I want to be.

Hi Billy!

Got nothing against a big town. Still hayseed enough to say, “Look who’s in the big town.” But my bed is in a small town and that’s good enough for me.

Yes or no?

Yes.

Well, I was born in a small town and I can breathe in a small town. Going to die in this small town. That’s probably where they’ll bury me. Yeah.