On the campaign trail in battleground Michigan on Thursday, second gentleman Doug Emhoff sought to make the case that his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, will be ready for the presidency “on day one” while urging those on the ground to put in the work to help her win.
“I'm crawling over shards of glass, I am knocking through every wall, every door, one because I love her, but two, because I love my country,” Emhoff said. “And we've got to run like we're 10 points behind and keep going until we're 10 points ahead.”
“Every vote counts,” he later added, before giving a nod to former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Committee last week.
“She also said we need to vote in numbers that erase any doubt and overwhelm any effort to suppress us,” he said of Obama before turning to the GOP ticket and appearing to reference former President Donald Trump’s attempts to challenge election results in 2020. “Because that’s what they’re going to do, unfortunately,” Emhoff said. “Because they can’t win on the merits, so they got to do all this stuff but we’re not going to let them.”
The second gentleman used his remarks in front of Harris supporters at a brewery in Grand Rapids to criticize Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, specifically for Project 2025 – the right-wing platform curated by the conservative Heritage Foundation that Democrats have rigorously sought to tie to Trump. The former president has sought to distance himself from it despite several of his allies and former staffers having had a hand in its creation.
“Some of the things they are talking about is just sick,” Emhoff said, mentioning reproductive health in particular.
He made the case that Harris seeks to “solve” problems while her opponents “cause” them.
“Very few people want what Donald Trump and JD Vance are actually talking about,” he said. “And don't be distracted by all the nonsense and the name-calling and all the ridiculous BS, as I call it, listen to what they're actually saying.”
By contrast, Emhoff sought to paint Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as a ticket that, if elected, will fight for all people, later telling an anecdote about hearing chants of “USA” while in Paris for this year’s summer Olympics and then again at the DNC in Chicago last week, where Democrats appeared to embrace displays of patriotism that have recently most often been associated with the GOP.
“That's not normally the soundtrack of a Democratic Convention, but it was this year and it was this year because of Kamala Harris,” he said. “She showed everyone there that it doesn't matter what party you are, to love your country, to be a patriot, to put the interests of other citizens before your own interest, to actually take that oath of office and honor it.”
The Harris campaign branded Thursday’s event at Broad leaf Brewery as centered on the vice president’s vision for the economy, a few weeks after the roll out of her proposal to ban price gouging in the grocery and food industries was met with some skepticism and criticism.
“If opportunistic companies take advantage of a crisis to rip off customers, she is gonna find it and she is gonna stop it,” he said. “It’s not ideological, it’s practical.”
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also delivered remarks ahead of the brewery’s owner Kris Spalding, who described the Harris-Walz ticket as focused on “civility,” “progress” and “opportunity.”
The second gentleman on Thursday also revived his role – one that is common for significant others of political candidates to take on – of seeking to show the human side of his wife, running through her background and reiterating that “her empathy is her superpower.”
“She’s also someone who always steps up when she is needed and now that the country, even the world needed somebody to step into the void, step into the breach, Kamala Harris did that,” he said.
The second gentleman is also set to campaign for Harris in Idaho on Thursday before hitting multiple states on the West Coast.
