Former Secretary of State John Kerry's Full Remarks at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
MILWAUKEE—Below are John Kerry's full remarks as prepared for delivery from night two of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
The Honorable John Kerry
Former Secretary of State
Democratic National Convention
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Hi, I’m John Kerry.
For the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, we led by example. We eliminated the threat of an Iran with a nuclear weapon. We built a 68-nation coalition to destroy ISIS. We forged a 195-nation agreement to attack climate change. We stopped Ebola before it became a pandemic.
Donald Trump inherited a growing economy and a more peaceful world and, like everything else he inherited, he bankrupted it.
When this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission, it’s a blooper reel. He breaks up with our allies and writes love letters to dictators. America deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at.
Donald Trump pretends Russia didn’t attack our elections. And now, he does nothing about Russia putting a bounty on our troops. So he won’t defend our country. He doesn’t know how to defend our troops. The only person he’s interested in defending is himself.
This is the bottom line: Our interests, our ideals, and our brave men and women in uniform can’t afford four more years of Donald Trump.
Our troops can’t get out of harm’s way by hiding in the White House bunker. They need a president who will stand up for them. And President Biden will.
Joe’s moral compass has always pointed in the right direction, from the fight to break the back of apartheid to the struggle to wake up the world to genocide in the Balkans. Joe understands that none of the issues of this world—not nuclear weapons, not the challenge of building back better after COVID, not terrorism, and certainly not the climate crisis—none can be resolved without bringing nations together.
Joe understands our values don’t limit our power, they magnify it. He knows you can’t spread democracy around the world if you don’t practice it at home. And he knows that even the United States of America needs friends on this planet.
Before Donald Trump, we used to talk about American exceptionalism. The only thing exceptional about the incoherent Trump foreign policy is that it has made our nation more
isolated than ever before. Joe Biden knows we aren’t exceptional because we bluster that we are; we are exceptional because we do exceptional things.
On June 6, 1944, young Americans gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy to liberate the world from tyranny. Out of the ashes of that war, we made peace and rebuilt the world. That was and remains exceptional. It is the opposite of everything Donald Trump stands for.
This moment is a fight for the security of America and the world. Text the word JOIN to 30330 because only Joe Biden will make America lead like America again.
