00:00It is such an honor to be with you guys today. I do just want to, before we begin,
00:05I want to commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11th attacks in 2001.
00:12And in honor of all that we lost, the 3,000 folks, including first responders who bravely rushed in,
00:19if we could just observe a moment of silence.
00:28Thank you, Spartans!
00:33And that's the only time in my life you ever will hear me say that.
00:37It is such an honor to be with you guys today.
00:39I do just want to, before we begin, I want to commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11th attacks in
00:482001.
00:50And in honor of all that we lost, the 3,000 folks, including first responders who bravely rushed in,
00:56and if we could just observe a moment of silence.
01:05So with that, you just heard from your incredible congressional nominee, William Lawrence.
01:10Can we give him a hand?
01:20And Ben from More Perfect Union, the whole More Perfect Union team.
01:23Can we give them a hand?
01:31So let's remember what we're here to do.
01:32Money out of?
01:34Money in your?
01:36Medicare for?
01:37One more time so that they hear you in Ann Arbor.
01:41Money out of?
01:43Money in your?
01:44Medicare for?
01:46I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it.
01:48Thank you all so much for making the time.
01:53To you, hopefully you guys can also win without cheating.
01:59There was an actual one minute left.
02:01They explained the whole thing.
02:04Listen, when it comes to winning without cheating, that's become kind of hard for some of the folks in the
02:11GOP.
02:12You already hear where they're headed with this.
02:15The guy I'm running against, the guy named Mike Rogers.
02:23He thinks, that one.
02:25He thinks he actually won the 2024 election.
02:31He's been palling around with Donald Trump for way too long.
02:34You might have seen him together yesterday in Dallas.
02:37Now, in case you were wondering, there is no Dallas, Michigan.
02:40He was in Dallas, Texas.
02:43Why was he in Dallas, Texas, given that he's running for Senate in Michigan and he actually lives in Florida?
02:50Because Daddy Trump told him to come.
02:54And I guess when Daddy Trump calls you, and you take orders from Daddy Trump, you go.
03:01He gave a whole speech.
03:03And you know what he didn't talk about?
03:05Didn't talk about the price of gas.
03:08Didn't talk about the price of groceries.
03:11Didn't talk about how hard it is to see a doctor.
03:16Didn't talk about the challenges facing our schools.
03:19Or how expensive it has become to get a higher education.
03:24He didn't talk about any of those things.
03:26Instead, he wanted to make the whole thing about a streamer in California.
03:34Kind of odd.
03:36Now we're talking about three different states that aren't Michigan.
03:40Went from Florida to Texas to talk about a guy in California.
03:45Habibi, you're running in Michigan.
03:47You should be talking about gas prices in Michigan.
03:49And good schools in Michigan.
03:52And health care in Michigan.
03:54But that's not what they want to talk about.
03:56Look, I'm never, I was never supposed to run for office.
03:59All right?
03:59When I was your age, at that school down 23,
04:05I wanted to be a doctor.
04:06I wanted to be a doctor because it shouldn't matter where you grew up in this country.
04:10There shouldn't be a 10-year life expectancy difference if you go 15 minutes.
04:14You deserve a long, healthy life in these United States of America.
04:18And then I went to med school only to realize that our health care system was more interested in billing
04:21than healing.
04:23So I went into public health.
04:25Got to rebuild a health department in the city of Detroit,
04:27Leadway County's Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services.
04:30We put glasses on kids, took on corporate polluters,
04:34eliminated medical debt, put Narcan in vending machines for free.
04:38And I'm never going to forget the day sitting in my office almost two years ago
04:42when this administration froze federal funds.
04:45Y'all remember that?
04:47And I'm trying to figure out how to make sure one more round of WIC checks go out,
04:50how to make sure that our federally qualified health centers don't shut down
04:55so people don't lose their health care,
04:57how to make sure that kids keep getting the vaccines they need that actually do save lives,
05:02regardless of what RFK Jr. says.
05:06When I got a notification that our current U.S. senator was not seeking re-election,
05:09there'd be an open U.S. Senate seat.
05:11Now I had to ask myself, where's the fight for the public's health now?
05:15If I were to be elected, I'd be the first Democratic doctor elected to the U.S. Senate in nearly
05:1950 years.
05:22First ever public health official elected to the U.S. Senate.
05:24And if you're kind of tired of dodging lettuce in the United States of America,
05:27I think we all could agree we probably need a public health senator right about now.
05:32But here's the thing about it.
05:33I ran for office eight years ago.
05:36I ran for governor.
05:37And I said something in that race that I think folks weren't quite ready to hear.
05:40I said, Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics.
05:43Donald Trump is the worst symptom of the disease of our politics.
05:47The disease is the system that allows billionaires, corporations,
05:51special interests to buy and sell politicians in ways that leave them rigging the system against us.
05:58They leave us paying more for all the stuff we've got to buy, getting paid less for the work we
06:01do,
06:01watching as our tax dollars get misspent to drop bombs on other people and their kids
06:05instead of investing in our schools and our kids and our infrastructure here at home.
06:10So we built a campaign to do three simple things.
06:13Y'all already know what they are.
06:14Money out of?
06:16Money in your?
06:17Money in your?
06:18Medicare for?
06:18All.
06:19And it's taken us all over the state, 110 different cities, 550 public events.
06:23For my troubles, the corporations and the special interests decided they really wanted to validate my message.
06:28They spent $70 million in that primary to try and beat me.
06:32$70 million.
06:33Got outspent 11 to 1.
06:36AIPAC alone spent $32 million, set a record on the amount that they spent against me.
06:41And guess what happened?
06:42We won anyway.
06:49But the job's not done.
06:51The job is not done.
06:54We've got 53 days left to work.
06:58The guy I'm up against, he was in Congress for 14 years.
07:02In fact, he was in Congress on that day, 25 years ago,
07:09when 3,000 of our fellow Americans were killed in a terrorist attack.
07:15And rather than vote to make sure that the brave first responders
07:19who ran into the rubble that day to save lives,
07:23rather than to make sure that they had health care,
07:25he voted not once, but twice, against giving them health care.
07:30Literally told a first responder who had part of his foot amputated,
07:34it's a New York problem.
07:38That's right.
07:42But that's in keeping with the fact that he just generally will vote
07:45to deny people health care in the first place.
07:47Voted 19 times to keep prescription drug prices high.
07:5319 times.
07:55Helped to architect legislation to expand opioids in a time
07:59when we already knew it was an epidemic.
08:02Then, he left Congress in 2014, retired, to a McMansion in two yachts in Florida,
08:08making $14 million doing advisory work for the exact same corporations
08:13that he had been regulating when he was in Congress.
08:16That's some revolving door corruption shit.
08:20And here's the crazy thing, he wants one more ride through the revolving door.
08:24Because here's the thing about it.
08:26His advisory work, he was working with companies to provide nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
08:33He was working with a company to enable a dictator in Venezuela to spy on his own people.
08:41Like, you can't make this shit up.
08:44And now he wants to be a U.S. senator representing our state,
08:50despite the fact that the only thing he's done with his time in office is to serve corporations.
08:56He is corporate, captured, corrupt, and cowardly.
09:00Dude goes all the way to Dallas because Daddy Trump told him to do it,
09:03but we got a debate next week, and guess what?
09:06He's not going to show up.
09:08So when people in Dallas want to hear him speak, he's happy to do it.
09:12But when people in Detroit want to ask him questions, no.
09:15Not interested.
09:18Got 53 days.
09:19This is a movement that's not just about beating Trump and Trumpism.
09:24This is about what we can build when we do.
09:27This is about the opportunity so that you graduate into a world
09:31where you don't have to worry about whether or not there's going to be a job for you
09:34because AI hasn't taken 50% of the available jobs.
09:38It's about building the kind of world where you don't have to worry
09:41if you're ever going to be able to afford a home.
09:43Don't have to worry about whether or not, if and when you decide to have kids,
09:47you get the right to choose when and with whom and in what circumstances to have them,
09:51and whether or not they're going to have child care.
09:53When they're born.
09:55It's about building the kind of America where you don't have to worry
09:57about losing your health care when you turn 26.
10:00It's that you can have health care guaranteed for you no matter what happens.
10:03And it's about standing up to the corporations who tell us
10:06that we cannot have those things in the first place
10:08because they're so busy buying and selling politicians to get their way.
10:14That's what this is about.
10:16Now here's the thing.
10:17They're going to tell us that we can't win.
10:19That it's not possible for us to actually have those things.
10:21They're going to tell us that we cannot guarantee
10:25debt-free and tuition-free college education.
10:28They're going to tell us that, so sorry, unions get in the way of our bottom line.
10:33Can't have them.
10:34They're going to tell us that it's perfectly okay
10:36if they want to put a data center in your backyard
10:38because they're building the AI that's going to come for your jobs.
10:42But when they come for us, when they come for our future,
10:48we've got to remember that actually it's our future and we're going to have a stake in it.
10:52So when they tell us we cannot have union rights, we won't back down.
10:57When they tell us that we cannot have guaranteed health care in this country,
11:01we won't back down.
11:03When they tell us that they want to send our money to do apartheid and genocide and war,
11:08we won't back down.
11:11When they come for our basic voting rights, we won't back down.
11:16And when they come to take our voice for the next generation, we won't back down.
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