Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts delivered a powerful endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris during her speech on the final day of the Democratic National Convention.
She appeared emotional when taking the stage on Thursday, as the crowd at the United Center welcomed her with an uproarious applause. The senator quickly got down to business, however, and drew a sharp contrast between the Democratic nominee and convicted former President Donald Trump.
“Kamala Harris can’t be bought and she can’t be bossed around,” Warren said, sharing that she first met Harris in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, when banks had “broken laws, cheated people and stolen homes.” During this time, Warren detailed how Harris, while serving as California’s attorney general, protected families while Trump was “scamming students at Trump University and trying to make money off people losing their homes.”
“Kamala Harris stepped up. She enforced the law, she fought the giant banks, and she delivered billions of dollars of help for families,” said Warren. “And that is the difference between a criminal and a prosecutor.”
The Massachusetts also appeared to troll Trump and Vance over an unfounded viral rumor that Vance once had sex with a couch. “Trust Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to look out for your family? Shoot, I wouldn’t trust them to move my couch,” she said.
Both Warren and Harris campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, but Harris dropped out the year prior while Warren stepped down after a lackluster Super Tuesday finish.
The senator was one of Harris’ early supporters after the vice president announced her run for this year’s presidency. “I’ve known her for 14 years, first as California’s attorney general, then as a US senator and now as vice president. I’ve seen firsthand her toughness, her smarts, and her compassion,” said Warren in an op-ed for Glamour in July. “I’m endorsing her for president of the United States because she will unite our party, prosecute the case against Donald Trump, and win.”
Warren wasn’t the only one to make a couch jab on Thursday at the DNC. While MSNBC’s cameras were live during the event, an attendee managed to hold up a phone behind a guest speaking to broadcaster Katy Tur that read: “JD VANCE FUCKS COUCHES.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) appeared to allude to the couch rumor while discussing veteran issues in the U.S. and taking aim at the Trump ticket.
“I know a couch commando when I see one,” he said.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.