00:00Let me express the gratitude from the people of the state of Vermont and people all across this country
00:08for the incredible courage that you and Minnesotans showed in standing up to Trump's domestic army ICE.
00:29We're showing the world how to fight back against brutality and illegal actions and unconstitutional actions.
00:39Thank you very much, Minnesota.
00:49Brothers and sisters, for better or for worse, we are standing in an historical moment,
00:59not only for the United States, but for the entire world.
01:04And there is an enormous responsibility that rests on all of our shoulders
01:10and on the shoulders of the people of Minnesota right now.
01:13Never before in the history of our country have so few people held so much power and had so much
01:25wealth.
01:27And these are not nice people.
01:33They are greedy people.
01:36And just because they have billions of dollars, you know what?
01:40They think that is not enough.
01:44They not only want to control our economy, and they do it.
01:50We have more concentration of ownership today than ever before.
01:55They not only want to control our media, we have more concentration of media ownership,
02:02both in traditional media and in social media, than we have ever had before.
02:08That's not enough for them.
02:10We now have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country.
02:26And that is precisely what this election is about.
02:41From where I come from in a small state, we believe that democracy is one person, one vote.
02:57And we and the American people are sick and tired of these billionaires who are saying,
03:04hey, we own the economy, we got it all, now we're going to take over the government as well.
03:09And we don't like candidates, we're going to spend huge amounts of money with lying 30-second ads to defeat
03:16them.
03:17That's what's going on right now.
03:18Peggy is being outspent 10 to 1.
03:26And these guys have unlimited money.
03:29They're going to put lying ads on television.
03:32And right now, in this moment, if the people of Minnesota can stand up, and I'm confident that they can,
03:41and tell these billionaires and their lies and their 30-second ads and their superbacks
03:47to go to hell, democracy is going to rake.
04:13And that's what this campaign is about.
04:15And I want you to understand, and I go all over the country.
04:19When you stand up to these billionaires, as you will, and when you defeat them,
04:26you will bring hope and inspiration to people all across our country, and in fact, all over the world.
04:44You know, as Peggy and Ilhan and Keith and Tina have said, they got the money, we have the people.
05:01And that is, in a nutshell, what this campaign is about, and it comes within a broader context.
05:08I know that in Minnesota, and I know certainly in Vermont, and I know all over this country,
05:12people are kind of scratching their heads, and they're looking around and saying,
05:16what the hell is going on in America today?
05:21People know, I don't care if you're a conservative, Republican, you're a socialist, progressive,
05:25no matter what you may be.
05:26People are saying, something is fundamentally wrong.
05:30We are moving in the wrong direction.
05:36Yeah.
05:37And part of that, certainly, is a president who is an authoritarian,
05:46happens not to believe in democracy.
05:53Happens not to believe in the rule of law.
05:59Happens to be somebody who thinks that it's appropriate for more and more power to come into his own hands.
06:09We have a president today, and the American people see it, who is a narcissist.
06:15You don't have to be a psychiatrist to know that.
06:22If this guy had his way, he would name half of the buildings in America after himself.
06:30This is somebody who is a pathological liar.
06:36I honestly don't think he knows the difference between a lie and the truth.
06:42This is somebody who, in a totally unprecedented way, is a kleptocrat
06:50who has increased his wealth and the wealth of his family
06:54by billions of dollars since he has been president.
07:03This is a president who waged a massive attack against working families.
07:10He gave a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%.
07:17And then, at the same time, unbelievably, he threw 15 million Americans off the health care that they have.
07:34And thousands of fellow Americans, low-income and working-class people, will die as a result of that decision.
07:45We have a president today who, when he campaigned, he told the American people how much he was opposed to
07:52endless wars.
07:55And then started a war with Iran, which has now led to the deaths of 17 Americans,
08:02the wounding of hundreds more, and the loss of life of many thousands of innocent men, women, and children
08:08in Iran and neighboring countries.
08:12And that war goes on and on.
08:16But as dangerous and dysfunctional as the Trump administration is,
08:24most working families understand that the crises we face are deeper than Trump.
08:32They understand that for decades, establishment policies and establishment politics have worked for the 1%,
08:44but not for working people.
08:53They understand all across this country that in the richest country in the history of the world,
09:01which is what we are today, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.
09:10You all know what living paycheck to paycheck is about.
09:14Peggy grew up in a family living paycheck to paycheck, so did I.
09:19And it means people are stressing out every day.
09:23How the hell am I going to pay for my rent when the landlord raises the rent by 20%?
09:29What happens if my car breaks down and I got a $1,000 repair bill and I can't afford to
09:35fix it?
09:35How do I get to work?
09:37And if I don't get to work, how do I feed my family?
09:40What happens if my kid gets sick and I don't have any health insurance?
09:47And what happens maybe if I have worked my entire life and I would like to retire with a shred
09:54of dignity and security,
09:56but I got nothing in the bank?
09:59That is what's going on all over America.
10:04Working class families are struggling to put food on the table to pay for the basic necessities of life.
10:12And the people on top have never, ever had it so good.
10:25And the American people are understanding that not only is our establishment policies not working,
10:37they understand, and Peggy and others described it to you this evening,
10:42that we have a corrupt campaign finance system.
10:48It's corrupt.
10:49There's no other way to talk about it.
10:58And that is why Peggy understands and Tina understands there's nothing more important
11:05than overturning this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.
11:25We've got to get super PACs out of the political process.
11:33And you know what else we've got to do?
11:35We've got to move toward public funding of elections.
11:46Let me give you the reason why the oligarchs are spending so much money here in Minnesota.
11:57They have looked around the country over the last year,
12:01and they are catching on that the American people from coast to coast
12:07are sick and tired of status quo politicians and status quo policies.
12:22They know what you know and I know,
12:26and that is that progressives have been defeating establishment candidates all over this country.
12:42The oligarchs, through everything they had against Iran Mamdani in New York,
12:48he won that race.
12:57We have won mayor's races in Seattle and in Washington, D.C.
13:07We have won congressional elections in Democratic primaries in Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California,
13:19Montana, Colorado, New Jersey, and New York.
13:32And, my friends, despite all of the money the oligarchs are throwing against Peggy right here,
13:38we're going to win right here in the state of Minnesota.
13:51So, the very simple question that I think everybody in Minnesota is going to ask themselves is,
13:56why? Why are these people, why are these super PACs controlled by billionaires,
14:02spending so much money to defeat Peggy Flanagan?
14:07What has she done that is so terrible that they have to spend that much to defeat her?
14:15And you understand, you understand that what they know is that Peggy is going to stand up
14:24to the greed of the billionaire class and fight for working families.
14:39And the agenda that Peggy is fighting for is the agenda of the American people.
14:50Does anybody here, anybody in this room, large room, we've got a thousand people here,
14:55anybody think that the American healthcare system is working?
14:59No!
15:01Does anybody think it makes sense that we are the only major country on Earth
15:06not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right?
15:10No!
15:12Does anybody think that the function of a healthcare system should be to make billions of dollars
15:18in profit for insurance companies and drug companies?
15:21No!
15:22Well, Peggy doesn't either.
15:29And that is why, together, we're going to guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child
15:37through a Medicare for All single payer system.
15:51Does anybody here think that we have an economy that is vaguely equitable when we have the
16:031% owning more wealth than the bottom 93%?
16:09No!
16:11Does anybody think that it is anything less than insane that you got one man, Mr. Elon Musk,
16:25owning three times more wealth than the bottom half of American households?
16:34OK, he says a lot of wealth in bloque in the bottom half of America
16:37And in the midst of this massive income and wealth inequality,
16:43the United States has the highest rate of Childhood poverty on any major country on Earth!
16:50OK!
16:52And one out of three seniors is struggling economically.
16:59So what Peggy Flanagan understands, and what you understand, and what the vast majority
17:05of the American people understand, is that when 977 billionaires in America, after receiving
17:14the largest tax break in history from Donald Trump, became $2.2 trillion richer, just for
17:23that one piece of legislation, what Peggy knows, what I know, these guys are going to finally
17:29start paying their fair share of taxes.
17:43We're not going to let billionaires get richer and avoid taxes once people sleep out on the
17:51street, and kids go hungry.
17:53That is going to change.
18:01Peggy knows that when seniors are struggling, we're going to raise Social Security benefits
18:07by lifting the cap on taxable income.
18:21And what Peggy knows is that when we have 800,000 Americans homeless here in Minnesota, in Vermont,
18:30and all over this country, when we have 20 million households spending half or more of their limited
18:37incomes, instead of spending a trillion-plus money on the military, we're going to build
18:44millions of low-income and affordable housing units.
18:57And unlike the President of the United States, Peggy understands that climate change is not a hoax,
19:08but an existential threat to our planet, but an existential threat to our planet, and we can create millions
19:14of good union jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency
19:22and sustainable energy.
19:30And Peggy understands that AI and robotics, developed and pushed by the very wealthiest people on Earth,
19:42Musk and Bezos and Ellison and Zuckerberg and the others, that these technologies are the most
19:49most transformational in the history of humanity.
19:54They will impact every man, woman, and child.
19:59And if we do not get our act together, they can wipe out, over the next decades, tens of millions
20:06of good-paying jobs.
20:13They could eviscerate our privacy rights.
20:17They're going to know every damn thing that you do, where you are, what your medical records are,
20:22what your bank records are, every email, every telephone call that you make.
20:27They will negatively impact the mental health of our kids.
20:31We've got millions of kids now having AI bots as their best friends, while reading scores and writing
20:39scores go down.
20:41And if AI, as some scientists believe, ever becomes smarter than humans, which is a pretty
20:48low bar, it could function independently of human control, threatening the very existence
20:57of humanity.
20:59And what Peggy understands, we cannot allow the wealthiest people on Earth to push these
21:07technologies without strong guidelines.
21:10We're going to take them on and make sure that these technologies work for all of us,
21:16not just to make the rich richer.
21:30And as Peggy mentioned in her remarks, there is another reason why super PACs are spending
21:38a fortune against her.
21:40In my view, Israel, like any country, had a right to respond to a terrorist attack, but
21:47it did not have the right to wage an all-out war against the Palestinian people.
22:05It did not have, did not have the right, within a population of 2.2 million people, it did
22:14not have the right to kill more than 73,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children, and the
22:23elderly.
22:24Did not have the right, did not have the right to injure 173,000 people, again, children,
22:34the elderly.
22:35It did not have the right to destroy virtually the entire infrastructure of Gaza.
22:44The schools, the health care facilities, the water systems, the waste water plants, the
22:52electric grid.
22:53It did not have the right to damage or destroy 92% of the housing units in Gaza.
23:06In other words, Israel did not have the right to commit genocide against the people of Gaza.
23:28And what Peggy believes strongly, and what I believe, and what the vast majority of the
23:34American people believe, the Netanyahu extremist government in Israel should not get one of the
23:42one nickel more from U.S.
23:45Hacksmith.
24:02The brothers and sisters, the eyes of the country, quite literally, watching Michigan,
24:08watching Minnesota, watching Maine, watching other states around the country.
24:12And the issue is not complicated.
24:16The issue is whether or not billionaires and their greed will be able to defeat candidates
24:25who are standing up for the working class of this country.
24:28That's what the campaign is about.
24:30Nothing more, nothing less.
24:33Now, what I can tell you, because I have worked with groups all over this country, these people
24:38on top have endless, endless amounts of money.
24:41I mean, when you're a billionaire, you can spend $20 million just like you going out for
24:45a cup of coffee.
24:46They don't even know it's gone.
24:48That's true.
24:49I really mean it.
24:50And with that money, they hire their consultants and they buy TV time and they figure out how
24:57they can use A.I. in ugly, dishonest ways and run lying TV ads.
25:02They are very good at doing that.
25:04But what they cannot do is mobilize people.
25:10Because they have nothing to say to the working people of this country, to the young people of
25:17this country.
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