22 October 2024, Madison City, Wisconsin, USA
Whitford’s speech comes straight off the top of the above video clip
What’s up Mad City?
I'm so happy to be back in my hometown and I am thrilled to welcome Coach Waltz and, what's his name, President Obama to this city that I love so much. And by the way, yes, of course. Absolutely. I would've voted for Obama for a third time. There's no question about it.
Wow. So here we are. What a moment. As Josh Lyman would say, 'What in God's name is happening right now?' It turns out that the fakest thing about 'The West Wing' was not the veneers on my teeth. It was the fact that we had rational Republicans.
Can you imagine if I walked into the writer's room and pitched a character like Donald Trump? Like, 'Okay, guys, how about this guy we're running against? He's a 34 count convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who found some way to declare bankruptcy six times after his daddy gave him almost half a billion dollars. He couldn't even run a casino! He brags about sexual assault. He mocks the disabled. He's a draft dodger who wraps himself in the flag and dessicrates the service of our veterans who gave their lives for our country, calling them 'suckers and losers', a serial philander who claims to represent Christian values while spewing hatred and division to all, and spends a life violating all 10 commandments like he's playing some sort of twisted bingo game with the devil, a malignant narcissist with a pathological need to tell people how good looking he is, what a vision of manliness he is. As he stands before his cultissupporters slathered in more makeup and more hairspray than a drag queen, dancing incoherently to 'YMCA' and finding a way to weave his love for dictators into a bizarre admiration for Arnold Palmer's junk.'
It's bad writing. It would've been laughed out of the room and it would've been insulting to Republicans.But this ain't no stinking television show. The stakes have never been higher and the consequences are real. I've been thinking about my dad who passed away a long time ago. My dad, George Whitford. He was president of Planned Parenthood at Dane County when I was a schoolboy. He worked at Cuna Mutual out on Mineral Point Road. But he gave his time to Planned Parenthood, which was not a partisan thing back then. He was just a dad who loved his wife and his daughters and thought they deserved agency over their own bodies and access to the healthcare they need!
Radical lefty ideas like that. But now the guy who brags about sexual assault is also bragging about the fact that he overturned Roe v Wade and stripped those fundamental rights away from half of our population. I want to speak the name Amber Nicole Thurman, and I want us all to remember her. She bled to death in Georgia because she wasn't close enough to death for the doctors to agree to treat her until it was too late. She was denied the medical care she needed, and she passed away unnecessarily leaving her 6-year-old son without a mother. I encourage you all, there's a GoFundMe in her name that I encourage you to visit. Or Jess Hamilton, a woman in Texas who I met who survived barely after her husband, Ryan found her bleeding out on the bathroom floor after being denied the medical care she needed because she wasn't close enough to death for the doctors to treat her in Texas out of fear of being prosecuted because of the draconian abortion ban that Donald Trump helped made possible, and he is proud of it!
These are not isolated cases. This is happening right now. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, this is last January, there were 65,000 pregnant rape victims. Look it up! Last January, living in states without access to abortion care. 65,000 rape victims forced to carry their rapist's baby to term. My God, Donald Trump is proud of it though. He was laughing. He was laughing about Amber Thurman on Fox the other day. So yeah, you may know me from 'The West Wing'', but apparently I'm working on a documentary right now called 'The Handmaid's Tale', and make no mistake about it, misogyny is at the reptilian brainstem of white Christian nationalism, and that is what we are up against. It's not pro-life when you don't give a shit about the number one cause of death for children in this country, which is guns.
None of it is pro-life. It is a radical war against women, and Donald Trump is leading the charge. Now, speaking of Christian nationalism, you've had a chance to peruse Project 2025. You know that the sequel 'My weekend with Donny Trump' that he is planning is going to be even worse in Weekend at Donny's 2' he wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act which would rip away health coverage from tens of thousands of people and kick people under 26 off their parents' plan. It's not pro-life. He wants to cut taxes for the richest of the rich and slap a Trump sales tax on everyone else that will cost you $4,000 a year if you're an average family. By the way, my dad, he had his favourite riddle was, 'Who's happier? The guy with 11 kids or the guy with $11 million? And the answer is the guy with 11 kids. But the reason is he is the only one who doesn't want more!'
And that's really, I think, explains Republican economic policy. For a very long time it's based on this Orwellian notion that the rich [pretends to get emotional] are victims. Even with increasing wealth disparities, the rich need to be liberated. They're [mock voice crack] overtaxed. They are overregulated and they need to be set free. It's insane.
What else? Oh yeah. In 2025, mass deportations, he's promised political prosecutions unchecked power in the hands of a rapidly deteriorating 78-year-old felon whose closing message, if you've been watching this week, appears to be I am out of my fricking gourd. I mean, it's mind boggling. What's next? Is he going to yank his pinky off and light it like a cigarette? I'm telling you, it's bad writing and it's dangerous. My dad, he's coming up a lot here. My dad had a phrase for guys like him. 'Donald Trump has a bright future behind him, '
And how lucky are we? How lucky are we to have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
The perfect candidates at this moment to turn the page on this civic virus and send Donald Trump and his radical allies into the dustbin of history where they belong? Instead of tearing us apart with hatred and division, vice President Harris and Governor Walz want to bring us together with joy and love to create a future we can all believe in! The future that our children deserve. And unlike Donald Trump, they have a little bit more than just a concept of the plan to bring costs down in Madison and all across the country. And don't worry, it's not a secret plan to fight inflation. It is an actual plan. It's written down for human beings to read, and it's available at kamalaharris.com. They're fresh ideas on how to support small businessess, make sure you make a living wage, and who knows, maybe even buy a house one day. They are committed.
They are committed to protecting our planet, to easing the burden of student loans, and of course, at this incredible moment to defending our most fundamental freedoms. Now, look, I've been coming back here every cycle for the last quarter century. I get it. I know. I don't know, but I have a real sense of the bombardment that you feel. You live in a state that is a swing state that is decided by a single point or less, and I know you must be bored hearing some celebrity lubricant like me. Sorry, that was weird. I didn't mean to get weird. It got weird, didn't it? We'll cut it, right? This isn't live, no. You don't need me to tell you what you already know that this is the most important election of your lifetime.
I just want you to know that exhaustion and despair is what they want you to feel. It's what that bully fraud, Eric Hufty, that's what he wants you to feel. I have trans people in my family and boy, come and talk to me sometime. Eric Hufty. How dare you! Dare you target a vulnerable community like that. No trans person's pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has ever prevented any other American from pursuing their own version of that.
It's perverse. It's perverse to score political points like that. It's perverse for Donald Trump to use a natural disaster where people are dying as an opportunity to spread disinformation and score political points. It's perverse, but I want you to know, they want you to be exhausted. They want you to feel despair. It's part of the strategy, and I'm here to remind you that action is the antidote to despair! I want to remind you of the unique, incredible power that you have at this moment in history, in this state, in this county. Three votes. What is it? In every ward can swing this state. If you can change your uncle's mind, have him call me ... If you can. I really want you to do this, especially with young people because we say, 'oh, young people don't vote' because Republicans make it incredibly hard for them to vote. Make sure, make sure five people who you may assume are with you, make sure they make a plan and make sure they vote. Because I got news for you. If we spend the next two weeks knocking doors, manning phones, doing everything we can to get out every vote with your help -
We're going to win! We're not moving back. We're not going back. We're moving forward! We're going to win! With your help, we're going to hold this country up. We're going to hold it up to its spectacular, unfulfilled aspirations. And Wisconsin, God, I love you. You're going to lead the way ... because with, ... you're going to send Tammy Baldwin so we can keep the Senate.
And with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, we're going to win! With joy. We're going to win! With love. We're going to win. Thank you, Madison.