Kamala Harris Addresses Trump, Foreign Policy, And More During DNC Finale

Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a rousing speech August 22 at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC), becoming the first woman of Black and South Asian descent to accept the presidential nomination of a major party.

She was nominated as the Democratic candidate after President Joe Biden decided not to move forward for re-election, and her speech in Chicago laid out her plans for leadership. 

Like Michelle Obama during her DNC speech, she referenced the family and life values learned from her mother, biomedical scientist Shyamala Gopalan. “My mother, was a brilliant, five-foot-tall brown woman with an accent. And, 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.”

During her speech she covered topics including foreign policy, voter responsibility, women’s rights, and healthcare. 

“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads. And listens. Who is realistic, practical and has common sense,” she said. “And always fights for the American people.”

She also talked about her choice to pursue a career in law, and how she started as a prosecutor in order to help victims of crimes and advocate for public safety.

“As a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, California, I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them,” she said. “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.”

“I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges,” she added. “…for workers who were being cheated out of their wages—the wages they were due—or seniors facing elder abuse. I fought against cartels who traffic in guns, drugs and human beings. Who threaten the security of our border and the safety of our communities.”

“To be clear: My entire career, I have only had one client: the people,” she continued. “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.”

She addressed former President Donald Trump’s campaign as well, calling out his plans regarding abortion and birth control, political alignment with “autocrats,” and other policies affecting the nation.

“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,” she said. “His explicit intent to deploy our active-duty military against our own citizens. Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.”

“And we know what a second Trump term would look like,” she continued. “It’s all laid out in Project 2025. Written by his closest advisers. And its sum total is to pull our country back into the past. But America, we are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back.”

View her full speech, via CNN, below: