🔰Kamala Harris addresses Democratic National Convention | full video

Please. Thank you so very much. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Okay, let's get to business. Let's get to business. All right. By thanking my most incredible husband, Doug, for being a partner to me, an incredible father to Cole and Ella, and happy anniversary, Dougie. I love you so very much. To our president, Joe Biden, that we have traveled together. Joe, I am filled with gratitude. Your record is extraordinary, as history will show, and your character is inspiring. And Doug and I love you and Jill and are forever thankful to you both. Coach Tim To the delegates and everyone who has put your faith in our campaign, your support is humbling. So, America, the path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected, but I'm no stranger to unlikely journeys. So my mother, our mother, Shyamala Harris, had one of her own, and I miss her every day and especially right now. And I know she's looking down, smiling, was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer. When she finished school, she was supposed to return home to a traditional arranged marriage. But as fate would have it, she met my father, Donald Harris, a student from Jamaica. They fell in love and got married, and that act of self-determination made my sister, Maya, and me. Growing up, we moved a lot. I will always remember that big Mayflower truck, packed with all our belongings, ready to go to Illinois, to Wisconsin, where our parents' jobs took us. My early memories of our parents together are very joyful ones. A home filled with laughter and music, Aretha, Coltrane, and Miles. At the park, my mother would say, stay close. But my father would say, as he smiled, run, Kamala, run, don't be afraid, don't let anything stop you. From my earliest years, he taught me to be fearless. But the harmony between my parents did not last. When I was in elementary school, they split up. And it was mostly my mother who raised us. Before she could finally afford to buy a home, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay. In the Bay, or the flatlands, we lived in the flats, a beautiful, working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses, and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride. My mother, she worked long hours. And like many working parents, she leaned on a trusted circle to help raise us. Mrs. Shelton, who ran the daycare below us and became a second mother. Uncle Sherman, Aunt Mary, Uncle Freddy, Auntie Chris, none of them family by blood, and all of them family by love, who taught us how to make gumbo, how to play chess, and sometimes even let us win. Family who loved us, believed in us, and told us we could be anything and do anything. They instilled in us the values they personified, community, faith, and the importance of treating others as you would want to be treated, with kindness, respect, and compassion. My mother was a brilliant, 5-foot-tall, brown woman with an accent. And as the eldest child, as the eldest child, I saw how the world would sometimes treat her. But my mother never lost her cool. She was tough, courageous, a trailblazer in the fight for women's health, and she taught Maya and me a lesson that Michelle mentioned the other night. She taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it. That was my mother. And she taught us, and she always, she also taught us, and she also taught us, and never do anything half-assed. As a direct quote, a direct quote, I grew up immersed in the ideals of the civil rights movement. My parents had met at a civil rights gathering, and they made sure that we learned about civil rights leaders, including the lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, those who battled in the courtroom to make real the promise of America. So at a young age, I decided I wanted to do that work. I wanted to be a lawyer. And when it came time to choose the type of law I would pursue, I reflected on a pivotal moment in my life. You see, when I was in high school, I started to notice something about my best friend Wanda. She was sad at school, and there were times she didn't want to go home. So one day I asked if everything was all right, and she confided in me that she was being sexually abused by her stepfather. And I immediately told her she had to come stay with us, and she did. This is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor, to protect people like Wanda, because I believe everyone has a right to safety, to dignity, and to justice. Prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim, but in the name of the people, for a simple reason. In our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. Explain this to console survivors of crime, to remind them no one should be made to fight alone. We are all in this together. And every day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge, and I said five words, Kamala Harris for the people. And to be clear, and to be clear, my entire career, I've only had one client, the people. And so on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or the language your grandmother speaks, on behalf of my mother, and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey, on behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with, people who work hard, chase their dreams, and look out for one another, on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination. Nation. Our nation with this election has a precious, fleeting opportunity. To move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans. And let me say, I know there are people of various political views watching tonight, and I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to hold sacred principles from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power. A president who unites us around our highest aspirations, a president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical, and has common sense, who always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life's work. As a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, California, I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them. As Attorney General of California, I took on the big banks, delivered $20 billion for middle class families who faced foreclosure, and helped pass a homeowner bill of rights, one of the first of its kind in the nation. I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges, for workers who are being cheated out of their wages the wages they were due, for seniors facing elder abuse. I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings, Putin, the secure and the safety of our communities. And I will tell you, these fights were not easy, and neither were the elections that put me in those offices. We were underestimated at practically every turn, but we never gave up, because the future is always worth fighting for. Fellow Americans, this election is not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite. He fanned the flames. And for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans, and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse. And consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol, his explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents, and anyone he sees as the enemy. His explicit intent to deploy our active-duty military against our own citizens. Consider, consider the power he will have, especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States, not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had, himself. What a second Trump term would look like. It's all laid out in Project 2025, written by his closest advisors, and its sum total is to pull our country back to the past. But America, we are not going back. Social Security and Medicare, we are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions. We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools, the Head Start that provide preschool and child care for our children. Charting a new way forward, forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class, because we know a strong middle class has always been critical to America's success, and building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. I'll tell you, this is personal for me. The middle class is where I come from. My mother kept a strict budget. We lived within our means, yet we wanted for little, and she expected us to make the most of the opportunities that were available to us, and to be grateful for them, because as she taught us, opportunity is not available to everyone. That's why we will create what I call an opportunity economy, an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed. We're a big city, and as president, I will bring together labor and workers and small business to create jobs, to grow our economy, and to lower the cost of everyday needs like health care, and housing, and groceries. We will provide access to capital for small business owners, and entrepreneurs, and founders, and we will air this housing shortage, Social Security, and Medicare. Now compare that to Donald Trump, because I think everyone here knows he doesn't actually fight for the middle class. He doesn't actually fight for the middle class. Instead he fights for himself and his billionaire friends, and he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to five trillion dollars to the national debt, and all the while he intends to enact what in effect is a national sales tax, call it a Trump tax, that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost four thousand dollars a year. Well instead of a Trump tax hike, we will pass a middle-class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 friends. I believe America cannot truly be prosperous unless Americans are fully able to make their own decisions about their own lives, especially on matters of heart and home. But tonight in America too many women are not able to make those decisions, and let's be clear about how we got here. Donald Trump hand-picked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom, and now he brags about it. In his words, quote, I did it and I'm proud to have done it, end quote. Well I'll tell you, over the past two years I've traveled across our country and women have told me their stories. Husbands and fathers have shared theirs. Stories of women miscarrying in a parking lot, developing sepsis, losing the ability to ever again have children, all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients. Couples just trying to grow their family cut off in the middle of IVF treatments. Children who have survived sexual assault potentially being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. This is what's happening in our country because of Donald Trump, and understand he has not done. As a part of his agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress. And get this, get this, he plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women's miscarriages and abortions. But they are out of their minds. Why exactly is it that they don't trust women? Well we trust women. Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom as President of the United States. I will proudly sign it into law. Many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others the freedom to vote. With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the freedom. And let me be clear, after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. And here is my pledge to you. As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed and I will sign it into law. To our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can't wait to citizenship and secure our border. And America, we must also be steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad. As vice president, I have confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances and engaged with our brave troops overseas. As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world, our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families. And I will always honor and never disparage their service and their sacrifice into the future on space and artificial intelligence. That America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate our global leadership. Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies, said Russia could quote, do whatever the hell they want. Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia's plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response over 50 countries to defend against Putin's aggression. I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO. With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done. Let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself. Let's ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7. Speakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival. At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many in his eyes lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure. The hostages are released. The suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists. I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump. They know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won't hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself. And as president, I will never waver in defense of America's security and ideals because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States everyone I meet, I see a nation that is ready to move forward, ready for the next step in the incredible journey that is America. I see an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world. That here, in this country, anything is possible. That nothing is out of reach. An America where we care for one another, look out for one another, and recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us. It has to fail for all of us to succeed. Unity there is strength. You know, our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America, talking about how terrible everything is. Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach. Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are. Let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for. Freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness, and endless possibilities. We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world. And on behalf of our children and our grandchildren and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish, and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on earth, the privilege and pride of being an American. Great chapter, most extraordinary story ever told. Well, if you didn't think you knew Kamala Harris before, you may know her now. This was a powerful, strong speech. It started off about biography, an extraordinary journey that her mother at the age of 19 crossed an ocean by herself in a story that can only happen in America, as she said. But the back half of this speech was tough. And I also thought to start, what a happy, what an amazing, hell of an anniversary, it's her 10th wedding anniversary, that she started paying tribute to her husband. There he is on stage with her. You know, I thought we really, Nora got a sense of her, but I thought she went much further than I thought she was going to do. She touched on nearly every hot-button issue. And took it straight on. She was very, very strident, very adamant about where she's going. It's, well, first of all, this is the cleanest, biggest audience she will have, because there will be a debate, but that'll be chopped up, and it'll be, this was her most direct moment to deliver. And what she delivered was not just her record, and not just a very strong indictment of Donald Trump and her positions, but a definition of America. An America out of which she grew. An America, a middle-class America, surrounded by nurses, firefighters, a blended family. One of the best lines, just as a matter of just rhetoric, none of them, none of the family bound by blood, but all of them bound by love. A family bound by love. She defined the America she came out of, and then is basically prosecuting the case to defend that America. When she said, too, guys, we must be worthy of this moment, people were wondering, is she going to meet this moment? I think she did. You know, I think for many people, you've seen Kamala in a different light, the way she walks, the way she talks, and she seems very, very secure and very confident in what she believes in, what she's going to do. And here come the balloons. There are a hundred thousand of them, we're told. And the campaign said beforehand that one of her main goals was to create a contrast between herself and Donald Trump. And boy, did she go there. Among the most memorable lines in this speech, he wants to be an autocrat. She said that autocrats know that he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. And she asked, why exactly is it that they don't trust women? And then she said, well, we trust women. She went there. I can't remember hearing a major party candidate or a president of the United States talk about access to birth control, medication, abortion, sepsis that women face, women's health, children's health care, all of that. When she talked about and accused the Trump administration of trying to issue a nationwide abortion ban and more, she said, simply put, they are out of their minds. I use the word tough because Governor Walz says they're weird. Kamala Harris said today they're out of their minds. And the way she delivered that line to Nora was also very deliberate. She said, imagine a Donald Trump with no guardrails. Donald Trump, she said, is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting back in office is extremely serious. She went there to Nancy's, he said, when she took on Donald Trump directly, too. Right. And I think women often have a higher bar to cross, particularly when it comes to looking tough, when it comes to national security. And on that point, she said, I have negotiated with foreign leaders. I have interacted with our troops, and I will never waver in my support of the United States. Yeah, you could have, the foreign policy portion of the speech, you could have just, that could have been John McCain in 2008. And so there was, that was consistent with all of what we saw before. But the idea of, her story could only happen in America, and her argument is, and unless we defend it, that America will go away. That is a call to be inspired by her story, but it also contains that other part, which is the peril. Let's check in with Tony DiCoppo, who is on the convention floor. Tony? Nora, I am on the convention floor, but that floor is now covered up to my waist in balloons. I think the confetti is in the air, the big balloons are flying, and the 2024 Democratic National Convention is definitely in the books, and people are loving it down here. Chuck Schumer, was he dancing, was he prancing? I just saw him go by. We've got cheers, we've got a certain underwater quality as people dodge the balloons, a certain concert quality as people wait and enjoy the music. And I will leave the reviewing of the content to you, but the emotion and the feeling down here is, I don't know, seven-year-old's birthday party is how I would put it. There is joy, and there's not a lot of thinking. It's a good time. All right, let's check in now with Ed O'Keefe. Ed? Nora, there was no Beyonce, no Taylor Swift, but a hundred thousand balloons are falling from the ceiling. The Democrats went out of their way to make very clear, red, white, blue, no gold balloons. You remember at the Republican Convention, Donald Trump asked for gold. None of those here tonight. The crowd wrapped in attention throughout this speech, listening as the vice president described her life story and laid out pretty quickly what she'd do domestically and on foreign policy, especially loving those lines about how this is the greatest country in the world, how she loves this country, how it was only possible here for her parents to meet. The sign, as Tony and others have observed throughout the week, that patriotism really is now a big theme for this party as they try to unite the country and win enough votes to hold on to the White House. Just a lot of balloons, Nora. So many balloons that you're at a loss for words. That's hard to believe, Ed O'Keefe, but thank you. Well, you made an excellent point. I had forgotten about the gold balloons at the Republican National Convention, but patriotism, a strong theme all of this week with the flags, with the big signs that said USA, you would think you could be at the Olympics almost. The patriotism that was displayed here all this week, Nancy. And you think that Ed's joking about the gold balloon thing, but actually, no, we got an email from the campaign that says point-blank, there are no gold balloons in the Democratic National Convention balloon drop, just red, white, and blue. Obviously, Donald Trump, a big fan of gold. Trump Tower, covered in gold. There have always been jokes about the gold toilet in the bathroom at Trump Tower. No gold here. Well, the concern about people not knowing who she is and what she stands for, I certainly think that she answered that question tonight. Agreed. She not only laid out her own biography, talked about her motivation for becoming a prosecutor. She had a classmate who had been the victim of sexual abuse. She talked about where she was from. Nora, think about, let's stop there for a second, about the classmate who was a victim of sexual abuse. Back then, it was unheard of to even discuss. Most of us didn't even know that such a thing was possible. So for her, at that young age, to be exposed to that and say to her friend, you can come with me, and that influenced her decision to later be a prosecutor, I think is extremely powerful. She also, in talking about January 6th, she also reminded people that she's a member of law enforcement as a prosecutor, which I thought was an interesting way to contextualize. She was always be concerned, she said, about the safety and security of the United States. And just one tiny little thing, Donald Trump's argument is make America great again. This speech said America's already great. Robert Costa is on the floor as well. Robert? As we watch the balloons fall, we are all also witnessing something dramatic in real time, the beginning of a tug-of-war of the nation's civic fabric. You have a former president who told me earlier this week over the phone that he sees the Democrats as a corrupt party, a party that's a disaster in power. He casts them as a party that would bring the country further into darkness. Here at this convention, you had a nominee introducing herself to the country, but also warning the country that, in her view, Donald Trump is a threat fundamentally to American democracy. This is not a red versus blue ideological battle. This is not a typical campaign. This is a new chapter, as she said, in the American story. But we're looking ahead to something that could be tumultuous for the country as it deals with two parties truly pulling at the definition of what it means to be an American. Robert Costa, thank you. And history made here tonight in Chicago. Vice President Kamala Harris is now the first black and South Asian woman to officially be the presidential nominee for a major political party in the United States. Just take that in. We just witnessed that. Election Day is in 75 days, and the campaign sprint officially begins now, and we will cover it every step of the way. And that is the close of this year's Democratic National Convention. A big thank you to our correspondents, analysts, and contributors and crew. And for all of us here at CBS News, thank you for joining us. I'm Nora O'Donnell. Good night.