CHICAGO (AP) – Governor of Minnesota. Tim Walz accepted his party’s nomination for vice president on Wednesday evening, using his Democratic National Convention speech to thank the packed arena for bringing “joy” to an election transformed by the nomination of his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We are all here tonight for one beautiful, simple reason: We love this country,” Walz said as thousands of delegates held vertical signs reading “Coach Walz” in red, white and blue.
Many Americans had never heard of Walz until Harris picked him as her vice presidential candidate, and the speech was a chance to introduce himself. He talked about his experiences as a football coach, his time in the National Guard and his family’s fertility problems – all parts of his biography that Republicans have questioned in the days since Harris nominated him.
While it’s unclear whether the speech will attract new voters, his background has further charmed Democratic supporters and helped balance Harris’s coastal roots as a cultural representative of the Midwestern states whose voters she needs this fall.
The Harris campaign said Walz worked on his speech for several days and used a teleprompter for the first time to practice whether he was prepared. He told the crowd, “I haven’t given many speeches like this, but I have given a lot of motivational speeches.”
“Some people just don’t understand what it means to be a good neighbor,” Walz said. “Just think of Donald Trump and JD Vance.”
Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, called the convention a “farce” on Wednesday and pointed out that he himself had been a frequent topic of conversation. He also attacked his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for a highly critical speech at the convention on Tuesday night, saying Obama had been “mean.”
It’s Day 3 of the DNC and there are 75 days until Election Day. Here’s what you need to know:
Walz presents his biography
Walz described his childhood in Nebraska and his time as a football teacher and coach in Minnesota, telling the crowd, “Thank you for bringing joy to this fight.”
He also criticized Trump and his running mate JD Vance and repeatedly attacked Republican policies. “While other states banned books from their schools, we banned hunger from ours,” he said.
Walz was accused of whitewashing his past. His wife this week clarified that she had not undergone in vitro fertilizationas Walz has repeatedly claimed, but used other fertility treatments. Republicans have also criticized Walz for Comment from 2018 He made a comment about carrying weapons in war. Although he served in the National Guard for 24 years, he was never deployed to a war zone.
Walz has made his family’s struggle to have children a central theme of his narrative, creating a concrete way to reach voters concerned about the erosion of reproductive rights in the U.S. On Tuesday, however, Gwen Walz issued a statement detailing her experience and disclosing that they had relied on a different procedure, called intrauterine insemination, or IUI.
Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the Democratic National Convention, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
“If you have never been infertile, you definitely know someone who has,” Tim Walz said Wednesday.
His daughter Hope formed a heart with her hands and held it over her chest.
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His son Gus wept openly throughout the speech, wiping his eyes with tissues as he watched in the front row.
Through tears he formed the words “This is my father.”
The Bill & Oprah Show
Two prominent Harris supporters on Wednesday were people whose paths had crossed with Trump over the decades they spent together in public life: Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, and Oprah Winfrey, the legendary talk show host.
Ironically, she said years ago that Trump could one day become president, even though Clinton was once so close to Trump that he attended his wedding to his wife Melania in 2005.
At a convention designed to spite Trump, Clinton and Winfrey portrayed Trump as selfish and Harris as someone who was more focused on the needs of ordinary Americans than their own.
“For me, we have a pretty clear choice: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy who has proven even more than the first time that he cares about me, myself and me,” Clinton said.
Clinton returned to a place he knows well: the stage at the Democratic National Convention, and fired up his party with his trademark impromptu speeches. He spoke about ten minutes longer than Walz did in the main speech.
Clinton is now 78 years old – the same age as Trump – but his speech was sometimes halting, his movements slower, and he mispronounced Harris’s first name twice. His left hand often shook when he wasn’t using it to grip the lectern.
Still, he made several memorable, straightforward statements, including the question: “What is your opponent doing with his voice? He talks mostly about himself. So the next time you hear him, don’t count the lies, count the ‘I’s.”
Oprah Winfrey speaks during the Democratic National Convention, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Winfrey – who filmed her famous talk show in Chicago for a long time – spoke out unreservedly for Harris and characterized her campaign with the statement “Joy!”
“In 2024, decency and respect will be on the ballot,” she said, adding: “Let’s choose common sense over nonsense.”
A focus on “freedoms”
The theme of the evening was “A Fight for Our Freedoms,” with the program focusing on abortion access and other rights that Democrats want to make central to their campaign against Trump. Speaker after speaker argued that his party wanted to defend freedoms while Republicans wanted to take them away.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis used a prop that has become a staple of conventions, a oversized book shall represent the Heritage Foundation Project 2025a sweeping set of goals to shrink government and move it to the right if Trump wins. Polis even ripped a page out of the ceremonial volume and said he would keep it and show it to undecided voters.
Florida State Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the story of a woman in her state, which passed new abortion restrictions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. One woman was forced to carry a terminally ill child to term, only to watch the newborn die just hours after birth.
Representative Bennie Thompson from Mississippi spoke about the Attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021He chaired a congressional committee investigating the mob that stormed the Capitol and said, “For the first time in American history, they wanted to prevent a peaceful transfer of power.”
“Thank God they failed,” Thompson said.
Democrats also paid tribute to the hostages still held by Hamas following its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin moved some in the arena to tears as they paid tribute to their son, Hersh, who was kidnapped in the attack.
The release of hostages is “not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said Jon Goldberg-Polin, adding: “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
The war between Israel and Hamas has divided the democratic base. Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate outside the United Center and several speakers paid tribute to the civilian casualties of the Israeli offensive in Gaza this week. According to local health authorities, more than 40,000 people have died in Gaza.
The man from Hope talks about joy
The loudest applause of the evening was for Clinton, who clearly enjoyed opening for Walz. He was a two-term president and leader of his party for generations. He mentioned that he attended his first convention in 1976 – but then corrected himself and said it was actually in 1972.
“I have no idea how many more of them I can visit,” Clinton said.
Still, he pleaded with delegates regarding the Harris-Walz nominee: “If you let them get elected and make sure they’re a breath of fresh air, you’ll be proud of it for the rest of your life.”
“Your children will be proud,” he said. “Your grandchildren will be proud.”
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Chicago, Jill Colvin and Ali Swenson in New York and Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.
