Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks at a "Fighting Oligarchy" rally in Nampa, Idaho.
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00:00How are we doing tonight?
00:10Are we ready to win?
00:14That's what I thought.
00:15Thank you, thank you, thank you so, so much for welcoming me.
00:19Boise, Nampa, Idaho, thank you so, so much.
00:22And I want to take the opportunity, and I want to thank, love you right back.
00:33I want to thank each and every one of you for making the effort to be here today, for taking the time to join together.
00:45You know, it's funny, I was hearing that earlier today on the television, there was someone saying,
00:55why is AOC, why is AOC Bernie going to Idaho?
01:02And I'll give you one simple answer.
01:05It's because you matter.
01:12It's because we matter.
01:15My name is Alexandria.
01:21Some of you may know me as AOC, and again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for welcoming me.
01:30You know, we're here together today because we share, all of us share, in the frustration
01:38and the heartbreak that comes from watching those in power actively tear down or refuse to fight for everyday working Americans like us.
01:50And we're here together because an extreme concentration of power, greed, and corruption is taking over this country like never before.
02:04You know, it's bone chilling, every day there's something new, and today we just saw President Trump express openness to taking U.S. citizens and sending them off without due process to foreign prisons.
02:24It's anti-American.
02:26But this concentration of power, greed, and corruption is oligarchy.
02:39It's oligarchy in America, and we must acknowledge the terrifying moment that we are in right now, and that what we are hearing and seeing with our own eyes is, in fact, happening.
02:54We are watching as our neighbors, students, and friends are being fired, targeted, and disappeared.
03:03This is real.
03:05People we love are being targeted and harassed just for being LGBTQ.
03:12Our workers, our co-workers, U.S. citizens and immigrants alike are being disappeared off the street by men in Vans.
03:24And those are being persecuted by men in Vans with no uniforms.
03:29Educators are being fired for teaching American history accurately.
03:37And activists are being detained with no charge or evidence for using their First Amendment rights, especially if they are being used to end the war in Gaza.
03:53administration admits that it has jailed Mahmoud Khalil, a young husband and
03:59father from where I come from in New York without any evidence or charge of a
04:03crime. They openly admit that they have thrown him in a cell thousands of miles
04:11away because he attended a protest and they did not like the content of his
04:17speech. And Donald Trump's detention of Mahmoud Khalil for his speech is
04:25anti-American, too. And we demand his release along with the release of Rumeisa
04:31Ozturk, who he is also jailing for writing an op-ed in her school paper.
04:39You know, Idaho, I am so touched being here. I'm a girl from the Bronx and to be
04:56welcomed here in this state, all of us together, seeing our common cause, this is
05:02what this country is all about. Don't let them trick us into thinking we are
05:10enemies. Don't let them trick us into being weak and being set into thinking we
05:15can be separated into rural and urban, black and right and Latino. We are one.
05:23And we make these demands because we do have power in this moment. All of us
05:32all of us do. Everyday people do. And it will never, this is important, it will
05:39never be just institutions and politicians and officials alone that
05:46uphold our democracy. It will always be the people, the masses, who refuse to
05:53comply with authoritarian regimes, who are the last and strongest defense of our
06:00country and our freedoms. It is you. It is you, Idaho.
06:07We know that a better world is possible and we are willing to do something about it.
06:18But to get there, we need to be honest about how we got to where we are right now.
06:24Because this moment did not come out of nowhere. It has been a long time coming. The destruction
06:32of our rights and democracy is directly tied to the growing and extreme wealth inequality in
06:40America that has been building for years. And it is not a coincidence that billionaires like Elon Musk
06:56dumped billions into this election to elect Trump. And he sure as hell ain't doing it out of charity, Idaho.
07:04For years we have known that our political system has slowly but surely become dominated by big
07:13money and billionaires. And time after time we've seen how our government and laws are more responsive
07:23to lobbyists and corporations than the will of everyday people and voters.
07:28And we also know that the agenda of dark money to keep wages low and loot our public goods to
07:38give to the rich is deeply unpopular with the people, Democrat, Independent and Republican alike.
07:49But just look at what Republicans have been quietly doing in Congress, voting to advance cuts on
07:57hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and veterans benefits so they can take that
08:06money and give it to billionaires in the form of tax cuts and sweetheart government contracts to their
08:13own companies like SpaceX. And I'll tell you, you know, I've seen Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House,
08:22talking, talking about Medicaid. First of all, Medicaid, I want you all to know Medicaid is one of the most
08:29efficient government programs with the least amount of waste.
08:37Only two percent, two percent of people on Medicaid are able-bodied and looking for a job. Only two percent.
08:45And I saw Mike Johnson on the television saying we've got to stop all these able-bodied men from being
08:53on Medicaid. First of all, like it's a crime for someone to have health care in America.
09:01Health care is a human right in America and everyone should have it. Everyone should see a doctor. We must end
09:09the indignity of not being able to afford medicine, a doctor's appointment, being able to take care of
09:18one another. But that aside, that aside, we must know that these cuts are exactly how they are trying
09:30to loot. It's not about waste. It's about what they're trying to give to the billionaires who pay them.
09:35And you know who voted? You know who from Idaho voted to gut Medicaid for everybody, by the way?
09:44Both of your senators, Jim Risch and Mike Crapo. And your House members, Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson.
09:57You deserve better, Idaho.
09:58They know that that's not what you want. They know it is deeply unpopular. They know that it hurts the
10:08working families of Idaho. But they are not here to serve working families. They are here to serve
10:15themselves and the billionaires who pay them. And they know that the only chance they have to get away
10:26with such an unpopular and hurtful agenda is to stoke deep divisions along race, identity,
10:34and culture to keep us fighting and distracted. It's not going to work anymore.
10:40But this has been the big money playbook, not just now, but it's been their playbook for decades.
10:56And that is why Donald Trump is not an aberration. He is the logical, inevitable conclusion of an American
11:07political system dominated by corporate and dark money. And if we are to defeat him,
11:17we must defeat the system that created him. America,
11:23we are at a crossroads. We can either have extreme wealth inequality with the toxic division and
11:32corruption that it requires to survive. Or we can have a fair economy for working people along with
11:40the democracy and the freedoms that uphold it. Oligarchy or democracy?
11:53You know, Boise, I grew up in a working-class family.
11:57My mom cleaned houses and my dad worked on a small business. And my parents worked themselves to the
12:07bone so that my brother and I could have a shot. The American dream, like so many of us here in this
12:14room. And for a moment there, it looked like we were going to make it. We had a home, bills were getting a
12:22little less stressful to pay, and I was doing well in public school. And what may have looked like a modest
12:30life to others was a dream come true for us. But suddenly, when I was a teenager, my dad was diagnosed
12:43with a rare form of cancer. And after a long fight, we lost him. My dad actually passed away in
12:51September of 2008, just as the economy crashed in the Great Recession and millions of our jobs vanished
13:01across the country. It felt like the world of my family was falling apart just as the larger world
13:08was falling apart too. Overnight, my mom was left to figure out how to provide and put two kids through
13:16school, keep our house, pay off medical bills, all on a house cleaner salary. And that's how I became a
13:24waitress. Because it was millions of innocent working families back then who paid the price,
13:32while the billionaires and thieves who defrauded our financial system got off richer than ever before.
13:40And not a single one of them went to jail. And that is the story that Republicans like to mock, not mine,
13:52but all of ours, when they say a waitress or a working person is unqualified to serve in Congress.
14:00When the fact is, many of us here in this room today are far more qualified to know what real life is
14:09like than any of them ever will. And I tell this story, I tell this story not because it is special,
14:22but because of how common and normal it is. While the details may differ, so many of us know what it
14:32feels like for life to be one bad day, one piece of bad news, one major setback from everything falling apart.
14:43And I'm here to tell you today, Idaho, we don't have to live like this anymore.
14:50We can make a new world, a better country, where we can fight for the dignity of all people.
14:57And that dignity looks like living wages, Idaho. It looks like stable housing. It looks like guaranteed
15:05health care and respect for all of our differences, no matter who we are or where we come from,
15:14oligarchy or democracy. Boise, we are here today because we choose democracy. We choose freedom.
15:25We choose justice. And that means we must choose to out-organize the oligarchy.
15:34We must do away with the power of big money. And that is why, even as a waitress with a long shot
15:42campaign for Congress, I decided right then and there that I would never take money from lobbyists
15:48and corporations and corporations and I never will.
15:59And you know what, Boise?
16:03We ran against millions of dollars. We ran with no support. We ran with just the people and the people
16:12won. And the people can win here too.
16:22You know, when I first got to Congress, I was genuinely shocked by how the place worked,
16:28even having run against dark money in the first place.
16:32The everyday influence of corruption and dark money was astonishing.
16:38And we, in Congress, have somehow conditioned ourselves to believe that is normal for elected
16:46representatives who have sworn an oath to the people of this country to day trade individual
16:53stocks and make millions with the sensitive information that we are entrusted with for the
17:00purpose of governing. Just look at what happened this week. But how can anyone possibly make
17:07an objective vote on health care, energy, or war when their own money is tied up in pharmaceutical,
17:14oil and gas, or defense company stocks? You can't.
17:21And we saw it just happen. With Trump's corrupt and disastrous and rushed tariff scheme,
17:29we saw Marjorie Taylor Greene buy that dip.
17:35I got one question for her. How much did you make? How much did you make off of people's despair?
17:42How much did you make off that panic? How much did you make off of that suffering? No more. We can't accept it.
17:48It was all, I hope we see now, that it was all about manipulating the markets so that he could
18:02quietly enrich his friends who bought the dip before reversing it all in the morning. Boise,
18:10this is a matter of fact. Donald Trump is a criminal who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud.
18:25Liable for sexual abuse. Of course he's lying and abusing and manipulating the stock market too.
18:34When he talks about rapists and criminals, he should look in the mirror.
18:53But back to stocks. To be clear, I don't care what party you are, Democrat or Republican. It doesn't
19:01matter how powerful one is or the position that one holds. Members of Congress holding and trading
19:07individual stock is wrong. It is corrosive. It is destructive. And it needs to be banned.
19:21I'll give you another example of something that I found so surprising.
19:25Just this year, I happened to be named to the Energy and Commerce Committee in Congress.
19:33Now, this is one of the most powerful committees in all of Congress. It controls two-thirds of the
19:41American economy. Healthcare, energy, trade, technology, communications, manufacturing. And for years,
19:50lobbyists fought to keep me off that committee. Because they don't like what they don't control.
20:03And an interesting thing happened the day that the announcement went out that I was named to this
20:09committee. Our phones rang off the hook and our inboxes were flooded by every corporate lobbyist under
20:18the sun who suddenly wanted to be my best friend. But you know what, Boise? Because of your support,
20:27because of you all showing up, because you allow me to not take a dime in corporate money, you free me to
20:34say no. And we can free others to say no, too. We have to free others to say no, too.
20:44Because I've seen how these groups bully and intimidate members of Congress, threatening to take
20:53money away from them or spend it against them if they don't do what they want. And what they want
21:00is for our lives to be as expensive as possible on the lowest possible wage.
21:06And I want us all to understand that this constant pressure that we are feeling in our lives,
21:15of the water rising up to our throats, of the impossibility to afford anything easily,
21:22of the bitter divisions driven more by online algorithms and the truth, of the fear of speaking up
21:29or for being who we are in public, the crumbling of our rights and protections, understand that all of
21:35this right now is what it feels like to be governed by billionaires. This is what oligarchy feels like.
21:47Not someday. Not in theory. Right now. And the first step is to open our eyes and our neighbors' eyes to it.
21:57Because, of course, it is a system that depends on division to enable inequality,
22:04that will favor a president who is the best at dividing us and most skilled at his corruption.
22:11And it will also reward the Republicans in Congress who support that agenda, no matter what crimes are
22:18committed. Big money is how we got Donald Trump. His whole presidency began with launching tools
22:29for bribery, meme coins and cryptocurrencies to fleece normal people and move money in the dark.
22:36Extortion settlements from media companies and the law firms who gladly pay them. The removal of
22:44of duly elected officials, I'll tell you, even Republican, the removal of Republican officials
22:51from where the inauguration was happening in order to make room for who Trump really wants in charge,
22:57which is the billionaires that were standing behind him. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk.
23:04And all of this has one central economic mission, to make billionaires richer at the expense of our
23:14country. And so it does not surprise us that their first economic priority has been to target
23:22Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the firing of our federal workers and the cutting of our veterans
23:29for hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts so that they can hand that money off.
23:37And Idaho, I know that looking around here, it can feel impossible for Republicans out here to be
23:45defeated. But we are here for a reason, because that's not true. It's simply not true.
23:54And from the waitress who is now speaking to you today from this podium, I can tell you, impossible is
24:02nothing. Miracles start with mustard seeds. And that is what each and every one of you represent today.
24:13Small miracles of faith in ourselves, in each other, and in the refusal to give up.
24:23So we are here for the long haul, Idaho. We're here to flip this state. We've not given up
24:31from the most impossible place. We will try. For school boards and community associations,
24:43for small business groups and town councils, for public arts and gestures of inclusion. And we
24:50will build from there. It begins today. The work to give Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson the boot
25:05and replace them with a brawling Democrat who will stand up for the working people of Idaho.
25:11If West Virginia, places like Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia could be blue and go to red,
25:22Idaho can go from red to blue.
25:30Beyond elections, our task is to build community,
25:36block associations, volunteer groups,
25:39church groups, PTAs, because community is the most powerful building block we have
25:45to defeat authoritarianism and root out corruption. So when they try to take our school boards and rip
25:54down the rainbow flags, we say, no, protect our kids here. It's up to you.
26:02And on a larger level, this is the path to guaranteeing health care to every American,
26:12to establish a living minimum wage, to take on skyrocketing rents and mortgages,
26:19to tackle the climate crisis and establish a country where the American dream is actually possible
26:26for all of us. So I'll end where I began. We might all come from different places,
26:38but we share so many of the same experiences. And so to all those who come here today,
26:46unsure of whether or not this is where you belong, I want to say that you do. You do.
26:56No matter if you have all the right words to say, no matter your race, religion, gender identity or
27:05status, no matter even if you disagree with me on some things. We saw some Trump supporters were
27:12protesting outside. No, no. See, the thing is, the difference between us is that we want their
27:19lives to be better, too. We want them to have health care, too. We want them to have a better wage, too.
27:28But the only way that we do that is showing them that hate has no home here.
27:36So if you are willing to fight for someone you don't know, you are welcome here. If you are willing to
27:42fight for working people regardless of who they are, how they identify or where they come from,
27:47you are welcome here because here everyone is valued.
27:54But we have to stand together, Idaho. We cannot be tempted to turn in our neighbors or be fooled into
28:02thinking that we are really that much different than a trans kid who just wants to be accepted by the
28:09people around us. We can't be tricked into thinking that we are that much different than the dreamer
28:18who wants to come here and fulfill this country's promise. Because hate is a trap that sinks us all.
28:29And it is standing together without exception, just as you all are doing today, to reject division.
28:37That and this is the only way that we can win. So I hope that you see that this movement is not about
28:44partisan labels or purity tests, but it is about class solidarity. The thousands of you who came out
28:55here today to stand here together and say our lives deserve dignity and our work deserves respect.
29:02No matter who we are. So we are here to make a sacred promise to one another.
29:12Our goal here today is to commit to building the kind of country that we all deserve. And we will make
29:21that promise. To take care of each other on our worst days and to share in the successes of our best.
29:29And with that, I want to thank you, Idaho, for welcoming me here today.
29:39And now it is my honor to introduce to you the man who has brought us all together.
29:48And now it is my honor to be here. Please welcome the one, the only.