3 October 2024, Wisconsin, USA
Boy, my God, what an amazing day to be in Wisconsin. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sheriff, for your courage and your service and for that wonderful introduction.
It is such a pleasure to be here today at Ripon College. And I have to tell you all, Wisconsin is special for me for a particularly important reason. Way back in 1966, when a very young Dick Cheney and Lynn Cheney were graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, I was born here. And so, go Badgers, exactly.
So, coming back to Wisconsin always feels to me more than a little bit like coming home. I want you to know the last time that I was here campaigning was 20 years ago in 2004. And although politics divided us certainly in that year, we were united in our admiration for the Packers legendary, Bart Starr. And one of the most special and memorable days I had on any campaign was the day that we got to spend with him, which included a personal tour of Lambeau Field. So, very special to be back again.
Now, you all know, of course, that here in Ripon, the Republican Party was founded. It was founded in a meeting in 1854 in the little white schoolhouse, and it was founded by people who were opposed to slavery. It was that Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower, the party of Reagan and Bush. It's that party that I belonged to my entire life.
I volunteered on my first presidential campaign. I already told you how old I am. So, I'll tell you. … in 1976 when I was ten years old and I was sealing envelopes for President Ford's re-election campaign.
I cast my first vote ever in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. I served in the State Department in both Bush administrations and I served in the United States House of Representatives for three terms, including as the third highest ranking Republican in House leadership.
So, in other words, I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray tanning.
I am a Ronald Reagan conservative. I believe in limited government. I believe in low taxes. I believe in a strong national defense. And I believe that the private sector is the engine of growth of our economy. I believe that the family, and not the government, is the most important structure in our society.
I know that our security and our freedom depend upon a world in which America, with our allies, leads. And above all else, I know that the most conservative of conservative values is fidelity to our Constitution.
I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat. But this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Thank you. But mostly, we're not going back.
Vice President Harris is standing in the breach at a critical moment in our nation's history. She's working to unite reasonable people from all across the political spectrum.
Vice President Harris has dedicated her life to public service. I know that she loves our country, and I know that she will be a president for all Americans.
As a conservative, as a patriot, as a mother, as someone who reveres our Constitution, I am honored to join her in this urgent cause.
As we meet here today, our republic faces a threat unlike any we have faced before, a former president who attempted to stay in power by unraveling the foundations of our republic by refusing to accept the lawful results confirmed by dozens of courts of the 2020 election. We cannot turn away from this truth. In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty.
At the very heart of our survival as a republic is the peaceful transition of power. Ronald Reagan said this was nothing short of a miracle that every four or eight years, the most powerful office in our land, indeed the most powerful office in the world, is passed peacefully to a new president. In the United States of America, violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do.
And in this country, under our Constitution, our president has a particular solemn obligation to ensure and guarantee the peaceful transfer of power. Since the beginning of the republic, every president in our history has fulfilled that duty, every president until Donald Trump.
When Donald Trump woke up on the morning of January 6th 2021, his intention, despite having lost the election, was that he would remain president. Rather than accept his loss and concede defeat, he had spent months overseeing a multi part plan to attempt to seize power and remain in office. He ignored the rulings of the courts. He corruptly pressured state legislatures, including here in Wisconsin, to overturn the results of their elections. He told the Justice Department to lie for him. He conspired to have fake electoral votes cast and he corruptly pressured his vice president to take illegal and unconstitutional actions.
He summoned a mob to Washington, D.C. with his lies, and he sent the armed mob to the United States Capitol in an effort to stop the counting of electoral votes. As the violent mob attacked our Capitol in Donald Trump's name, as they brutally beat law enforcement officers, as they hunted the vice president and the speaker of the House, Donald Trump watched the attack on television for hours,
Sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office, he refused repeated pleas from his family, from his closest advisers, from the most senior officials in his campaign and in our government to tell the mob to leave.
And when Donald Trump finally did speak publicly after hours of violence, after the Capitol had been invaded, he praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That's who Donald Trump is.
Those facts, those facts that we know about what Donald Trump did, including what he did when our Capitol was under siege, those facts do not come from Donald Trump's political opponents. Those facts come from the people closest to him. They are the ones who testified that Donald Trump did not want to stop the violent attack on our Capitol.
When he learned that Vice President Pence was not going to abandon his oath and help Trump seize power, Trump sent out a tweet attacking Pence and further inflaming the mob. One of Trump's aides testified that shortly after that, this aide received a phone call alerting him that the vice president had been evacuated for his own safety from his office off the floor of the Senate. This aide recalled rushing to the dining room to tell Trump, hoping that this information would convince him to take immediate action to ensure the vice president's safety. Instead, after this aide delivered that news, Donald Trump looked up at him and said, so what? He said, so what?
It is Donald Trump's closest aides who also told us this. They said that while the attack on our Capitol was happening, Donald Trump was handed a note informing him that a civilian had been shot at the door to the chamber of the United States House of Representatives. Donald Trump put the note down on the table in front of him, continued to watch the attack on television and still refused to tell the mob to leave the Capitol.
Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself. I don't care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. That is depravity, and we must never become numb to it.
Any person who would do these things can never be trusted with power again. We must defeat Donald Trump on November 5th.
In that election, 20 years ago, when we were campaigning in Wisconsin and all across the country, we were campaigning as compassionate conservatives. What January 6th shows us is that there is not an ounce of compassion in Donald Trump. He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel. And Donald Trump is not fit to lead this good and great nation. Now, sometimes people will say, you know, January 6th wasn't that big a deal. You know, in a time when I have heard many pretty stunning things from Republicans, one of the most stunning was yesterday from your former governor, Scott Walker, who said, basically, people are over January 6th.
When you think about what that means that an elected official, a former elected official is so willing to minimize what happened, to say things like I've heard from others to say, don't worry, our institutions held that day, we have a responsibility, all of us to remind people that our institutions don't defend themselves. We, the people have to do that. We, the people defend our institutions.
And our institutions held on January 6th because there were brave men and women, including elected officials at every level of our government who did their duty, who stood up for what was right, who resisted Donald Trump's efforts to pressure them to violate their oaths.
And our institutions held especially because of the bravery of the men and women in law enforcement and in our military, in our Capitol Police, our Secret Service, the Metropolitan Police. They're the ones who defended our Capitol, our democracy, and our lives. Many of them fought a bloody hours-long battle on the west front of the Capitol. Go watch the video of that battle. It is sickening. They're the ones who held the line and prevented far worse from happening that day. They are the true profiles in courage. Do not let anyone lie about what happened and what they did.
Our institutions also held because of Vice President Mike Pence, who refused -- he refused to violate his oath to the Constitution. And that is why Mike Pence is not Donald Trump's running mate today. Instead J.D. Vance is on the ticket.
Vance has said -- I mean, that's true. Vance has said repeatedly that he would have done what Donald Trump wanted. That he would have rejected electoral votes. He would have thrown out the votes of the people of Wisconsin because he didn't like the way that you voted. That is tyranny and that is disqualifying.
History teaches us again and again that democracies can fall. They fall to populists. They fall to strongmen, strongmen who beguile their fellow citizens with conspiracy theories and false emergencies. As my friend, the late Charles Krauthammer, taught us, the lesson of our history is that the task of merely maintaining strong and sturdy, the structures of our constitutional order is unending. It is the continuing and ceaseless work of every generation. And that responsibility now falls on all of us in this election.
This great country of ours requires leaders of character. We must choose men and women who have what Abraham Lincoln called a sincere heart. Our nation's second president, John Adams, put it this way. On the first night he ever spent in the White House, he wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail. And his letter included a prayer, a prayer that is so special, President Kennedy had it engraved in the mantelpiece in the State Dining Room in the White House. And in his letter he said this, May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.
Now, I'm confident -- just a second, I am, I am confident that John Adams meant women too.
In this election, a broad coalition has come together to support Vice President Kamala Harris. Now, we may disagree on some things, but we are bound together by the one thing that matters to us as Americans more than any other, and that's our duty to our Constitution and our belief in the miracle and the blessing of this incredible nation.
We have a shared commitment as Americans to ensuring that future generations live in a nation where power is transferred peacefully, where our leaders are men and women of good faith and where our public servants set aside partisan battles to do what's right for this country.
So, today, I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump. And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president.
I know that a President Harris, that President Harris will be able to unite this nation. I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law. And I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children, and if I might say so, especially our little girls, to do great things. So, help us right the ship of our democracy so that history will say of us when our time of testing came, we did our duty and we prevailed because we loved our country more.
And now it is my great honor to introduce you to our vice president and the next president of the United States, Kamala Harris.