My Remarks at a Harris-Walz Rally in Las Vegas, Nevada

Remarks as delivered in support of Vice President Kamala Harris

Hello, Vegas!

Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?)

(Applause.)

Oh, it is good to be back in Nevada! It is good to be back at Cheyenne High School.

I’ve been here so many times over the years, it feels like I should get a diploma. (Laughter.) I feel like a Desert Shield.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you, Obama!

I love you back!

I do. That’s why I keep coming back.

But I am here today for a very important reason, and that is to make sure not just that you vote, but everybody you know votes for your members of Congress, Steven Horsford, and Dina Titus and Susie Lee, for your Senator, Jacky Rosen, and for the next president of United States, Kamala Harris.

You already you already heard from Jacky and some other speakers, but I’m going to reiterate this. We’ve just got to drum this home.

Here in Nevada, voting has already started. You can vote early by mail, or you can vote in person. You can still register to vote at any early vote center in your county. Just go to IWillVote.com/NV, and you can find a vote center or a ballot drop box near you. And then help your friends and family make a plan to vote, because together, we have a chance to choose a new generation of leadership in this country and start building a better, stronger, fairer, more equal, more hopeful America now.

But before I start digging in, it’s kind of hot in here, so I want everybody to bend their knees a little bit if you’re standing. If you’ve got a little water, take a sip. I don’t want anybody falling out. You’ll be okay, but it’s embarrassing. (Laughter.) All right, so keep those knees bent a little bit. Every once in a while, move around. Don’t stand too stiff.

All right, now that we’ve gotten that taken care of the preliminaries —

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you, Obama!

(Applause.)

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: We know this election is going to be tight, and it’s going to be tight because a lot of Americans are still struggling. As a country, we’ve been through a lot over these last few years. You think about it, we had a historic pandemic that wreaked havoc on communities, on businesses. And then the disruptions from the pandemic caused price hikes, and that put a strain on family budgets. And so, people started feeling like, no matter how hard they ran, they were kind of treading water. And they started worrying, will my kid have the same kind of future I had?

So, I get why people are looking to shake things up. It’s understandable; I understand it. What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you, because there’s absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.

I’ve said it before. I’m going to say it again. (Laughter.) Donald Trump is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down that golden escalator nine years ago. I mean, he is constantly complaining, he’s griping. And when he’s not complaining, he’s trying to sell you stuff. (Laughter.)

He trying to sell you some gold sneakers. He was trying to sell you a $100,000 watch, supposed to be Swiss made, but nobody in Switzerland really knows where it got made. He’s trying to sell you a Trump Bible. Think about that. This is the word of God. Gideon gives it out for free. He wants to sell you word of God, Donald Trump edition. He’s got his name right there next to Matthew and Luke.

And by the way, I’ll give you one guess where those Bibles are made.

AUDIENCE: China!

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: In China! Yeah, this is Mr. Tough guy on China, except when he can make a few bucks. Then he’s all like, ain’t nothing wrong with that.

You cannot make this stuff up. You can’t make it up. If this was an SNL skit, you’d be all like, well, come on, that’s over the top.

No, he’s doing these things, and the reason he’s doing it is because all he cares about is his ego, and his money and his status. He’s not thinking about you. He sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut to help mostly him and his country club buddies. He doesn’t care if he costs more women their reproductive freedoms, because it won’t affect his life.

Most of all, Donald Trump wants you to think that this country is hopelessly divided between us and them, and between the quote, unquote, real Americans, who obviously support him and anybody who doesn’t, because having people divided and angry and resentful and full of grievance, that boosts his chances of being elected. That’s why he does it.

Do not boo. Vote!

Listen, I was backstage here, and I was hearing y’all boo. Let me tell you something. (Laughter.) Cannot anybody hear your boos. You know what they hear? Your vote. They hear your vote, they don’t hear your boos.

(Applause.)

Vote!

(Audience chants.)

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: I like that. Go ahead.

Now, so I’ve spoken about Donald Trump’s intentions, what his concerns are. They are not you. But there’s another concern that I have about Donald Trump, which is his confidence.

Have you seen him lately? I mean, he is out there. He’s giving these two and a half hour speeches, just a word salad. You don’t know what he’s saying at any given moment.

He holds a Town Hall meeting. Now, the point of a Town Hall meeting, I’ve had maybe 1,000 of them. The point is, you meet with people and you answer their questions. He just stopped. He’s all like, “I don’t feel like taking questions anymore.” And then we’re just going to — (laughter) — he just played music for half an hour, just swayed to “Ave Maria” and “YMCA.”

I mean, imagine if Jacky or I did that. Now our playlist might be better, but it is strange behavior.

He called himself the father of IVF. I have no idea what that means, and neither do you. (Laughter.)

He said January 6th was a day of love, said it — don’t boo, vote! — said it was a day of love. I mean, made it sound like it was Coachella.

You would be worried if your grandpa started acting like this. You would. I mean, right? You’d call up your brother, your cousin, and be like, have you seen grandpa lately? What are we going to do? (Laughter.) But this is coming from somebody who wants unchecked power, wants the most powerful office on Earth, with the nuclear codes and all that.

Now the point is we do not need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails. America is ready to turn the page. We’re ready for a better story. Arizona, we are ready for a president Kamala Harris! That’s what we want.

(Applause.)

And the good news is that Kamala Harris is ready for the job.

I mean, this is a leader who has spent her entire life fighting on behalf of people who need a champion, somebody raised in the middle class, worked at McDonald’s while she was in college, just to pay her expenses, somebody who believes in the values that built this country. And she is as prepared for the job as any nominee for president has ever been. That’s who Kamala is.

And in the White House, she will have an outstanding partner in Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota.

I love that guy. Tim’s a veteran. He’s a teacher. He is a football coach. He’s a hunter, been a great governor working with Democrats and Republicans to get stuff done. And I just found out he can take vintage trucks apart and put them back together again. (Laughter.)

Now, imagine that. Do you think Donald Trump can do that?

AUDIENCE: No!

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Do you think Donald Trump’s ever changed the tire in his life?

AUDIENCE: No!

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: If he gets a flat tire, he calls Jeeves. “Jeeves, change that tire.” (Laughter.)

The point is, if you elect Kamala and Tim, they won’t be focused on their problems, they’re going to be focused on your problems.

(Applause.)

They understand too many folks here in Nevada and across the country are struggling to pay the bills.

And listen, wages actually are steadily growing, and inflation is finally slowing. But for a lot of folks, the price of everything from health care to housing to groceries, it’s still too high. It hurts. The question is, who’s actually going to do something about it?

Yeah, I know you know the answer, but I’m going to tell you anyway. (Laughter.) Somebody’s all like, “I know, I know.” (Laughter.)

Donald Trump’s plan is to give another massive tax cut to billionaires and big corporations.

Now, wait, hold on. Some people hear that, because I’m having conversations with folks. They’re all like, “Well, I don’t know. I know Trump’s kind of crazy, but I remember the economy when he first came in into office. I remember those first two years were pretty good.”

Yeah, yeah, it was good, because it was my economy.

(Applause.)

Some of y’all remember what it was like in Nevada when I came into office, the worst financial crisis in history. The housing market collapsed here in Nevada. You remember that, boarded up homes everywhere, folks’ mortgages underwater?

I spent eight years cleaning up that mess that the Republicans had left me. And then I handed over to Donald Trump 75 straight months of job growth, and all he did with it was give a tax cut to the people who didn’t need it, drove up the deficit in the process. And now he wants to do it all over again.

If you hear, if you’re talking to somebody, and y’all know somebody who’s all like, well, I don’t know, I remember Trump, the economy, that was pretty good, you remind them. It wasn’t good because of anything he did. So, that’s point number one.

Point number two: When it comes to health care, Donald Trump has got one answer. He wants to end the Affordable Care Act. He doesn’t even really know what the Affordable Care Act is or how it works. He just knows I did it.

No, that’s the truth.

A couple weeks ago, his running mate had the nerve, the hutzpah to say Donald Trump, quote, salvage the Affordable Care Act. There are a bunch of folks from Congress here. Let me tell you, he spent his entire presidency trying to tear it down, and he couldn’t even do that right. (Laughter.)

And now, eight years after he was elected, y’all saw this, he was at the debate. The moderators asked a pretty reasonable question. It’s like, “Well, you always want to say you want to end the Affordable Care Act. What are you going to replace it with?” And he kind of stumbled, and then he said, “Well, I have a concept for a plan,” for how he’d replace it. What? (Laughter.)

I want you all to think about this a second. Let’s say your boss gives you an assignment, says to you, “I need this done by Friday.” Friday rolls around and she says, “Did you finish that project I asked for?” And you say — (laughter) — “Well, no, ma’am, I haven’t actually started, but I do have a concept of a plan.” (Laughter.)

We’re here in Cheyenne High School. We’ve got some high school kids here. You should try that on one of your teachers. (Laughter.) A paper’s due. Due date rolls around. Everybody’s turning it in. You don’t have yours. Say, well, I do have a concept for a paper. What? How’s that going to go over. If it wouldn’t work for you, why should it work for the President of the United States?

(Applause.)

But the good news is, Kamala Harris doesn’t have the concepts of a plan, she’s got an actual plan to make your life better.

(Applause.)

She’s got a plan to bring down the cost of things like groceries. She’ll go after corporations that are jacking up prices, just like she went after big banks and for-profit colleges when she was attorney general of California.

To lower housing costs, Kamala will cut red tape and work with state and local governments, as well as the private sector, to build three million new homes. She has a concrete plan to do that. And then she’ll give first time home buyers up to $25,000 to help with a down payment. That is a concrete plan to help solve the issue of housing affordability.

(Applause.)

To lower health care costs, Kamala already worked with Joe Biden, Jacky Rosen, members of Congress who are here to take on the drug companies, bring down the cost of insulin, hearing aids, more than 50 prescription drugs. And as president, she’ll never stop working to limit out-of-pocket costs and protect your care.

And instead of giving more tax cuts to folks who don’t need them, to billionaires, Kamala will give a tax cut to 100 million middle class and working people here in America.

(Applause.)

That’s who Kamala is. That’s what she stands for, not concepts of a plan, actual plans.

Now, I’ve got some more points. (Laughter.) If you challenge Donald Trump or his VP nominee, Vance, if you challenge them on, well, these concepts don’t seem to make much sense, and nobody really understands them, and the economists tell you they’re not going to work, if you challenge, they’ll fall back on one answer, it does not matter what it is, housing, healthcare, education, paying for the bills, one answer: Blame the immigrants.

(Audience boos.)

Don’t boo. What’d I tell you?

AUDIENCE: Vote!

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: He wants you to believe that if you elect him, he will just round up whoever he wants and ship them out, and all your problems will be solved.

Now let me tell you something, because I’ve been working on this for a long time. We have a real issue at the border. We are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. We have to make sure the system works the way it’s supposed to, so that we’ve got legal immigration, which built our nation, where we’ve got folks like the DACA folks that I worked on behalf of to make sure that they grew up here, that we give them pathways to citizenship.

(Applause.)

But we also have to have an orderly border. We have to have it fair. There’s nothing — that’s the truth. We have to fix some aspects of it that are broken.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Si se puede!

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Si se puede.

(Applause.)

But when I hear Donald Trump talk, he’s very quick to say to Kamala, “Well, you were vice president for four years.” Dude, you were president for four years.

(Applause.)

As I recall, you were up there in the Oval Office. So if rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them who are women and children, if that’s the answer to everything, well, why is it that the number of undocumented immigrants were basically the same when he left office as when he took office?

He didn’t solve the problem, and I’ll tell you why, because he does not have a real plan. He has a concept of a plan, and it’s a mean and ugly plan designed to foster resentment and divide people.

You know what would actually bring order to the border, help fix our immigration system? There was a bipartisan deal just a few months ago. Kamala Harris supported it, even though it was written by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.

That same bill, Donald Trump purposely told Republicans in Congress, “Do not vote for it,” not because he thought necessarily that it won’t work, but because he wanted to keep the issue to campaign on. He thinks fear mongering is how he’s going to win this election.

We do not need a president who will make problems worse just to make his politics better. We need a president who actually cares about solving problems and making your life better. And that’s what Kamala Harris will do!

And in order for her to do it, she is going to need a Senate full of public servants like Jacky Rosen.

This is something that sometimes, folks forget about. We need Kamala Harris in the White House, but I can tell you this from experience, you need a team. Presidents are not kings, although Donald Trump would like to think they are. You need a Congress that supports what you want to get done.

Jacky has a long record of looking out for middle class families, of taking on special interests to bring down costs. She’s one of the most bipartisan members of the Senate. She doesn’t care which party you’re from, if you’ve got a good idea to make life better for the people of Nevada, she’ll work with you. She’s for it!

That’s the kind of person we need in Washington. That’s who you need alongside our other outstanding senator from Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto.

The kind of person that they’re going to roll up their sleeves and help Kamala get things done, folks who share our values, who want to move the country forward and not back.

Now, one of those values is freedom. So let me talk about that just for a second, because I don’t think we’ve ever heard an election with candidates who understand freedom so differently.

For Donald Trump and his cronies, freedom means just getting away with stuff. It’s like he said in the middle of the pandemic. I don’t know if people remember this. I remembered it, because I was paying attention. People were dying. Our hospitals were overrun. He’s the president United States, and at one point he said, “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”

I am not sure any American president has ever uttered those words, but that’s his idea of freedom. “I do what I want, and I’m not responsible for anything.”

Well, we’ve got a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide our families, to provide for our families, if we’re willing to work, the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send our kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life. And it requires us to recognize other people have the freedom to make different choices than the choices we might make.

Even on the most divisive issues, I’ve always said there are good people of conscience on both sides of the abortion divide. I respect anybody whose faith tells them that this is not something they believe in. I understand that, but if we believe in freedom, then we should at least agree that such a deeply personal decision should be made by the woman whose body is involved, and not by politicians.

And it’s been fascinating to watch Donald Trump, because I think he’s trying to figure out, well, maybe this isn’t a popular issue for me. And he’ll say anything, right? So now he’s trying to tie himself into a pencil on this issue.

When he first ran for president, he said he would support punishing women who got an abortion.

A few weeks ago, he told a bunch of women, “I will be your protector.” (Laughter.)

Listen, I’ll tell you how he protected you. He handpicked three of the Supreme Court judges who overturned Roe versus Wade. He went out there and bragged about it. Now there are Trump abortion bans in 20 states, many of them with no exception for rape or incest. And he’s out there saying, “Everybody wanted it this way.” No, they didn’t.

Donald Trump may be confused, but let’s be clear about what’s at stake here. If you send Jacky Rosen back to the Senate, she and Catherine Cortez Masto will vote to restore the reproductive freedom that women had for nearly 50 years. And if Congress passes that bill, Kamala will sign it in the law.

And here in Nevada, you don’t have to wait, because abortion, reproductive freedom is actually on the ballot. You have a chance to vote yes on Question 6 for reproductive freedom and keep women, not politicians in control of their personal medical decisions.

It’s an example of how, as frustrating as politics can be sometimes, elections really do matter.

Listen, I understand how, especially in today’s climate, politics just seems so mean and nasty, and there’s so many lies floating around. People get on these doom scrolls on TikTok, and it’s like, oh, man, that’s terrible. Oh, that’s worse. That’s terrible. Oh, my God!

And so, you get frustrated, and it feels like nothing’s going to work. But the truth is, when you vote, it matters. It can make your life better or it can make it worse.

Sometimes, I talk to folks who don’t think is going to make a difference, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins. No, no, you hear it. You guys know people like this, right? I mean, they’re not bad people. They’re just like, politics, it’s not going to make any difference in my life. They figure it’s not going to have an impact.

And I constantly have to remind them, yes, whoever is president, they’re not going to end poverty overnight. They’re not going to end racism. You’re not suddenly going to not have to go to your job and listen to your boss. Things are not going to suddenly be perfect, but you know what? It makes a difference.

When I passed the Affordable Care Act, almost 50 million people got health care that they didn’t have before. That made a difference in their lives.

More than 50 million people with preexisting conditions can no longer be denied coverage or charged more. It made a difference to them.

Listen, when I was President, I’ll give you just one other example, and I want you to use this example when you’re talking to folks who say it’s not going to make any difference.

I had been talking to scientists for a while. And so, in my last year in office, we put together a playbook for how to deal with the eventuality of a pandemic, because scientists had been saying, with globalization and travel, etcetera, rising populations, that at some point there was going to be a pandemic. And so, I said to my team, I said, “We’ve got to have a plan,” just like you do for hurricanes or tornadoes or natural disasters.

So, we put together this whole playbook, and we ran. We practiced the playbook. We get all the agencies. This is how we’re going to respond. This is how to make sure that the public health systems in all the states are working. Here’s how we’re going to think about the schools. And when Donald Trump came in, we gave over this playbook to them.

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: But the point is, he ignored it! And three years later, a pandemic hits.

Now, I want to be really be fair on this, but I want everybody to pay attention. No matter who was president at the time, this was going to be a problem. This was a generational pandemic. People were going to get sick; people were going to die. We didn’t have a vaccine right away. Businesses were going to have to shut down for a while. Travel was going to be restricted.

But if you look at a country like Canada, their per-capita death rate was 40% lower than it was here in the United States. So just do the math. That’s more than 400,000 people, people’s grandmothers, people’s fathers, people’s moms, who would have been alive if Donald Trump had just paid attention and tried to follow the plan that we gave him. It might have been somebody in your family that could have been impacted.

If somebody tells you that this doesn’t make a difference, having somebody competent, somebody who cares about you, who listens to ordinary people, who listens to people who are experts in these areas, if you hear somebody say, it doesn’t matter, it does matter. And at some point, it will make a difference to them.

And if that’s not enough, if that’s not enough, then remind them that, you know what, this election is also about more than policies. It’s about values, and it is about character.

Some of you know, I grew up, I didn’t have a father in the house. My parents divorced when I was two. I met my dad once for about a month. But I did have a lot of people around me, a stepfather, my grandparents, teachers, coaches, most of all, my mom, who taught me the difference between right and wrong, showed me what it meant to have integrity, to be honest, to be responsible, to work hard, to treat other people the way I wanted to be treated. And most of you grew up the same way.

And I’ll tell you the truth. When I was a teenager, young adult, I didn’t always live up to those values. (Laughter.) I made mistakes, but I tried to learn from them. And as I got older, I continued to benefit from people who reinforced those values, obviously, my wife Michelle.

But also friends and neighbors and coworkers. And I’ll give you an example. Being in Vegas makes me think about my friend, Harry Reid, who was the president of the Senate for a long time. And he was a proud Democrat. He didn’t shy away from bare knuckle politics. One day, a staffer added him a draft of remarks in which he referred to himself as a former boxer. And he was editing, and he crossed out “former.” (Laughter.)

He was a tough guy. He was 70 years old at the time, but he refused to see politics as just this battle between good and evil. He’d work with Republicans. He worked with people who didn’t agree with him. He understood we’re all a bundle of contradictions. We’ve all got flaws, but despite our individual differences, it’s our collective humanity, what we have in common that makes a difference. That’s what makes a country great. The point is, he had values. He had character.

One of the most disturbing things about this election, about Trump’s rise in politics, we seem to have set aside the values that so many of us were taught.

A few weeks ago, one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history, President Biden, Vice President Harris, they’re down, meeting with local officials, comforting families, making sure aid is in place. Donald Trump and his running mate made up stories about the Biden administration withholding aid, giving it to undocumented immigrants, not giving it to Republicans, just making this stuff up. Even Republicans on the ground, even MAGA Republicans on the ground said it wasn’t true.

So my question is, when did that become okay? How can it be okay? It doesn’t matter where you stand on the issues. It doesn’t matter what your party is. That kind of behavior is not okay. If your coworkers acted like that, they wouldn’t be your coworkers very long. If you had a family member like that, you might still love them, but you wouldn’t put them in charge of nothing. (Laughter.)

And yet, when Donald Trump repeatedly lies or cheats, or shows utter disregard for our Constitution, or just insults people, when he calls service members who died in battle “losers” or fellow citizens “vermin” or “the enemy within,” people make excuses for it. They say, “Well, he’s not serious.”

Everything a president says is serious! Everything that somebody who’s aspiring to office is listened to!

And people make excuses for it. They think, well, it’s funny or it’s okay, as long as our side wins. And I’ve noticed this especially among some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying people or putting them down is somehow macho sign of strength.

I’m telling you, that’s not what real strength is, never has been. Real strength’s working hard, real strength’s carrying a heavy load without complaining. Real strength is about taking responsibility for your actions. Real strength is telling the truth even when it’s inconvenient.

Real strength is about helping those who have less or need some help, standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves.

That’s what we should want in our sons and our daughters. That’s what I want to see in the President of the United States.

And the good news is you have candidates to vote for in this election that have demonstrated that kind of character, who know what real strength looks like, who will set a good example and do the right thing, and leave this country better for it.

Nevada, that’s the choice in this election. It’s not just policies on the ballot. It’s about who we are and what we stand for.

So whether this election is making you feel excited or scared or hopeful or frustrated, or anything in between, do not sit back and hope for the best. Get off your couch and vote!

Put down your phone and vote!

Vote for Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States, and Tim Walz as the next vice president of the United States.

Vote for Jacky Rosen and this whole incredible Nevada Democratic ticket. Help your friends and family and neighbors and coworkers do the same, because if enough of us make our voices heard, we will leave no doubt about the outcome of this election. We will leave no doubt about who we are and what America stands for. And together, we will keep building a country that is more fair, and more just, and more equal and more free.

That is our job, Nevada. Let’s go get it! That’s what we’re going to do.


I love you! God bless you. Let’s go vote!