PHILADELPHIA — Democrats packed a Philadelphia basketball arena to the gills on Tuesday, with more than 10,000 raucous supporters cheering on Kamala Harris and her newly named running mate, Tim Walz. In his first speech since becoming the presumptive vice presidential candidate, Walz roasted Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, as he declared that the next 91 days would not just be about winning the election, but doing it “with a sense of joy.”
The mood inside Temple University’s basketball arena was certainly joyful — ebullient even, bordering on orgiastic. Crowded together under enormous “Harris and Walz” signs and sporting light-up wristbands like the kind Taylor Swift gives out at the Eras Tour, Philadelphians helped Harris and Walz kick off a tour of their own: a five-day blitz through seven battleground states, starting with the most important one on the map for Democrats this November — Pennsylvania.
The pair walked out onstage together early Tuesday evening, just hours after a fleet of black SUVs converged on the Minnesota governor’s St. Paul residence early Tuesday morning and plunged him directly into the center of the 2024 election vortex, and one day after Harris clinched the top spot on the Democratic ticket. Addressing the throngs of screaming supporters, Harris introduced the world to Walz: a teacher, National Guard member, congressman, governor, and coach who helped take a high school football team from a winless season to state championship.
When it was Walz’s turn to speak, he told the crowd that it was his students who inspired him to get into politics. “They encouraged me to run for office. They saw in me what I was hoping to instill in them: a commitment of common good, a belief that one person can make a difference,” Walz said. “And because high school teachers are super optimistic, I was running in a district that had one Democrat since 1892.”
Walz went on to draw a contrast between the work he did when he arrived in Congress — on the Veterans Affairs committee and on behalf of rural communities — with Trump’s priorities as president, and the Republican Party at large.
“Some of us are old enough to remember … when the Republicans were the party of freedom,” Walz said. “It turns out now what they meant was the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make — even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves. There’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”
He also, as he has done in the weeks leading up Harris tapping him as her running mate on Tuesday, went after Trump and Vance. “These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell,” he said to huge applause. “That’s what you see. That’s what you see.”
Walz even joked about an unfounded rumor that Vance had sex with a couch. “I can’t wait to the debate the guy,” he said before waiting several seconds for the applause to subside. “That is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
If the crowd’s reaction was any indication, they approved of Harris’ choice in a running mate. The vice president had a historically truncated window to consider a decision after she emerged as the party’s choice to take on Trump when President Joe Biden decided to leave the race last month. She chose Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was also on hand on Tuesday. Shapiro took the stage to thunderous applause, taking several beats to soak it up before telling the crowd, as if to preempt any accusations of hard feelings, “I love you Philadelphia — and you know what else I love? I love being your governor.”
Harris’ choice has been widely praised online, and certainly in Philadelphia on Tuesday, but even as Walz has received a warm welcome, some attendees at the rally admitted they weren’t well acquainted with Walz before his name began circulating in the veepstakes. Tameka Bates, a SEIU union member, was thrilled to see Harris. But as for Walz? “I don’t know much about him; I’ve just heard about him this morning,” she said.
Jan Ostroff said she had only learned of Walz in the past few weeks as his profile rose as he appeared on TV auditioning for the role of amiable attack dog. “I would have been happy with any of her choices for vice president, but I’m really happy with him, because this way we get to keep Josh Shapiro for ourselves for a little while longer,” Ostroff said.
The near-universal praise of Walz — from figures as far apart ideologically as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Manchin — stood in stark contrast to the Republican party’s reception of Vance just a few weeks before. Vance, who had a favorability of -5 percent when Trump asked him to join the ticket has only seen his standing tank to -14 percent as more Americans have gotten to know him, earning him the distinction of being the least-liked vice presidential pick in history. (It’s hardly surprising considering Vance’s three biggest media moments have revolved around that couch rumor, the ongoing damage control efforts around his 2021 attack on “childless cat ladies,” and a charming anecdote in which he told his son to “shut the hell up” while he was on the phone with Trump.)
Ahead of the lovefest at Temple University, Vance held his own appearance in Philadelphia, attended by a comparatively small smattering of supporters. The Trump campaign made the questionable decision of sending Vance on the road to hold an event in every city that Harris and Walz are set to appear in this week. The split screen in Philadelphia was stark: Vance struggled to fill a room with a one-tenth of the capacity of the arena in which the Democratic ticket appeared. He spoke in front of a banner that read “Kamala Chaos,” but it was hung too low, so seated event attendees blocked out “Chaos,” and at first glance it looked like Vance was at a Harris event.
Trump, meanwhile, is spending the week at Mar-a-Lago, where on Tuesday he met with a seat-sniffing Kick streamer, who may have violated FEC rules by gifting Trump both a Rolex and Cybertruck emblazoned with his image. He has just one appearance planned this week, in Montana.
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.