Full Transcript of Barack Obama’s Ohio Rally Speech – Oct 24, 2026 

There’s also this whole tariff business. Our current president loves tariffs. Loves them. Tariffs. Now he was warned at the time when you impose tariffs, consumers pay the tab.

Because it’s not just the goods that you use directly that have been imported from someplace else. It’s also the car you build here in America, they might need a part from somewhere else, and now suddenly there’s a tariff on it. So the prices go up.

He was warned about that. “No. That’s not what’s going to happen. This is going to be great. Everything’s going to turn out great.” No. That’s not what happened. In fact, tariffs helped contribute to rising prices.

And the big trade war he’s starting now is with that well-known evil empire, Canada. Canada. I mean, these are the people who gave us maple syrup and Martin Short. Canadians are the nicest people. They’re so nice. They’re like our friendly neighbors to the north.

And he’s like picking a fight with… Deficits, like he said with these tariffs, we’re now running a debt to the tune of $40 trillion. 40 trillion.

Now you would think that with all this going on, our current president must have at least passed some legislation to bring down prices. You would think. Right? But the only bill they passed of any significance in the last two years was a trillion-dollar tax break that mostly benefited the richest Americans. Don’t… What did I say? Don’t boo. Vote. Vote.

Securing the Border

Now I’ve heard the argument the president’s done some things folks wanted to do, like tightening up the border. And you know what? I believe that we do need to make sure that our border is orderly and secure and that people who want to come here do so lawfully. And in fact, when I was president, I got criticized by some close Democratic allies for tightening up enforcement at the border.

But I don’t recall anybody campaigning on sending masked agents running through our streets. I don’t recall anybody talking about law-abiding citizens being arrested, detained, or shot. We did not ask for that. That’s not what we have to do to get our borders under control.

So when you go through all this, tally of promises, things had not worked out the way we might have expected. Although, I must say, I did expect it.

Home Renovations and Self-Enrichment

And let’s be honest. Does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV.

Guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. It’s paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything… More gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. So he’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you.

Now, there is one thing he does seem to focus on in addition to home renovation, and that is how to enrich himself and his family and his cronies. Just look at the last couple of weeks. We’ve got a United States ambassador shaking down a donor to pay off $100,000 credit card bill.

Then we learned there’s a Venezuelan billionaire who wanted a pardon, paid one of Trump’s personal lawyers $15 million to be general counsel at a company nobody knows anything about, and lo and behold, he gets the pardon, falls out of the sky, and this culture is set at the top.

We have never seen a president excel so wildly and just straight up grifted on your dime. Never seen a president so intent on selling favors and shaking folks down. We have lost count of all the deals he and his family have done, from meme coins to taxpayer-funded contracts for his kids’ companies.

And this is someone who has become billions of dollars wealthier in office. And by the way, this is not disputed. I’m not making this up. It’s all there, and not a single Republican in Congress has done anything to stop it. Not Jon Husted, not any of the Republicans on the ballot here in Ohio. Most of them have supported him every step of the way.

So you remember that whole thing about “drain the swamp”? The only thing that got drained was the Reflecting Pool in the National Mall after some no-bid contract got it all messed up, and then they tried to blame a three-time Olympian and say he vandalized it.

This Election Is the Circuit Breaker

All right. I mean, the list could go on. And here’s the tough part. Alright? Like it or not. So I want a little reality check. We got two more years in this administration. Wait. I mean, wait. Hold on. I mean, I’m just… That’s how our system of government works.

But you know what? You know what we’re not stuck with? We’re not stuck with a spineless Congress and Republican governors who are enabling lawlessness and carelessness and cruelty and indifference for working people. We’re not stuck with that. We’re not stuck with folks who are enabling policies that take more and more out of your paycheck and cut your health care and drive up prices. We’re not stuck with that.

This election is our last best chance to at least rein in some of the foolishness of this administration. It’s the circuit breaker in the system. We need to flip that circuit breaker. We need to start bringing some accountability to this administration.

And just as important, we need to start showing the American people who are hungry for solutions what real leadership looks like, what concrete plans look like that actually lower costs and actually make health care more affordable and make housing more affordable and get utility bills under control. We can’t just be against this administration’s behavior. We have to start showing them what a future on the other side of this administration can look like.

And that starts with you, Ohio. That starts with you. That starts with electing Amy Acton governor. That starts with sending Sherrod Brown to the United States Senate. Starts with them.

Republicans Running From Their Record

I almost feel bad for their Republican opponents, almost, because after spending the past couple years just singing this president’s praises, doing his bidding, they’ve now come to realize everybody’s pretty upset about all these broken promises. So what are they doing? First of all, they’re pretending like they’ve never heard of the guy. “Donald who? I’m sorry. Who?”

And then, of course, they’re also doing what they always do, which is running all kinds of scary ads make you think Democrats are radicals and communists and that the woke police will arrest you and force-feed you tofu or… Yo. We are not going to fall for that. They run that same okey-doke every election, and we’re not going to… It’s tired. Tired.

Jon Husted vs. Sherrod Brown

We’re clear about the choice in this election. Jon Husted is a guy who, as Sherrod already mentioned, voted not once, not twice, voted 14 times to support the Iran war that’s helping drive up gas prices here in Ohio. 14 times. Don’t boo. No.

Voted three times to block folks from reining in the tariffs that have been driving up costs, voting to kick hundreds of thousands of Ohioans off Medicaid and raise health care costs. And by the way, this is the same guy who, as lieutenant governor, pushed so hard for data centers, he’s been called “a data center’s best friend.” Now I don’t know if that’s a title I’d want, but that’s it.

You know who hasn’t been called that? Sherrod Brown. If there is one thing we all know about Sherrod Brown, and I’ve known him for two decades, is that he is not looking out for the high and mighty. He’s not working on behalf of people living high on the hog. He’s looking out for folks who are doing an honest day’s work and are still having trouble getting by. And that’s who he is. That’s who he’s always been.

And by the way, you can tell by how he’s dressed. I mean, this is not a guy who enriched himself cozy enough to corporations. He still is wearing the same suit he was in when I met him twenty years ago. Yo. He got a haircut for this rally, but y’all know he’s too cheap to get a haircut more than, I don’t know, once every couple months. He’s got this quarter zip. That’s… I kinda told him, “You know what? We gotta spruce you up a little bit.”

Sherrod is not somebody pretending to look out for working folks. He has always been there for you. Even when it’s hard, even when he might lose an election, even when he knows folks are going to spend millions of dollars against them, he’s always challenging the status quo, always taking on the system, always fighting for you.

And that’s what he’ll do in the United States Senate. He’ll ban members of Congress from trading stocks, ban them for life from lobbying after they leave. He’ll put a cap on how much utility companies can raise rates. And when it comes to data centers, he’ll make sure corporations and not Ohioans are paying the full cost of their energy needs. They’ll fight to make sure decisions about data centers are made, not in secret deals, but out in the open by you in Ohio communities.

And he’ll build on the great work we did because he was there every step of the way passing the Affordable Care Act, and he’s going to make it illegal for drug companies to charge Americans more than what they charge in other countries. And taking on insurance companies who are denying Ohioans care and protecting health care for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. That’s who Sherrod is.

So if you want lower costs, vote for change. Vote for Sherrod. You want to end the war and get gas prices under control, vote for change and vote for Sherrod. You want to stop corruption and grifting, vote for change. Vote for Sherrod Brown.

The Governor’s Race: Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton

And then you’ve got a governor’s race here. Let’s talk about that. Now there’s one political observer who was recently asked whether Vivek Ramaswamy wants to be a good governor or some kind of political celebrity. And the political observer said, “I don’t know. I assume he wants to be both.” This wasn’t some Democratic pundit who said this. It was Republican Governor Mike DeWine.

Vivek’s supporters know it’s all about what’s in it for him. We all know that guy who’s just thirsty, just wants to get attention no matter what, willing to do anything?

And in recent days, we’ve seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to to try to get in the limelight. I mean, think about this latest ad he ran. Do not boo. I want us to just focus on this. Wait.

There’s a decency that we should expect out of our public officials. And I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that. There’s got to be something inside you where you just say, “No office is worth stooping that low.” Because you know what? Character matters.

Amy has spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she’s experienced, abuse, neglect, and homelessness. And she’s never forgotten the people who looked out for her, who refused to look the other way when she needed a helping hand.

And that’s why she dedicated her life and her career for looking out for Ohioans, looking out for people in need, looking out for people who maybe didn’t get a fair shot. That’s what she did when Mike DeWine recruited her to join his cabinet and lead Ohio’s health department. And that’s what she’s going to do as governor.

She’ll cut taxes for as many as 775,000 Ohio families to lower costs and put money in your pockets and lift people out of poverty. She understands child care shouldn’t bust the family budget, so she’ll make child care more affordable. Forgive medical debt because no one should go broke because they need a medical procedure.

And on day one, as governor, she will sign anti-corruption executive orders to make sure Ohio’s government is working for Ohioans and not special interests. Amy Acton is not in this to be some kind of political celebrity. She’s in it for you.

Serious People for Serious Times

So, look, these are unsettling times. These are unsettling times. The economy is changing fast. AI is here, and we need to make sure it benefits everyone, not just a few billionaires. We need to revamp our education for the new era that AI is ushering in. We’re facing a housing shortage, and we need to build millions of homes. We need to rein in the cost of child care so young families can afford it. We need to make sure no one has to worry about high health care premiums.

I get frustration. I get the anger and the cynicism because the system is not working, partly because of gerrymandering, partly because rich and powerful folks are able to buy and sell elections like never before, pouring the kind of money we’ve never seen. Partly because we’ve got a Republican Party that used to stand for smaller government and now seems to stand for corrupt government or inept government or no government.

And partly because this is also true too often, even among well-intentioned folks, including Democrats. There are times when we get so caught up in process and bureaucracy that we don’t deliver the goods fast enough to make a real difference in people’s lives and people get frustrated. They don’t see enough change out there.

And that’s the reason we need serious people in Washington and in state capitals. These are serious times. And what is striking about this moment is just how unserious the people in charge are right now. People who are more interested in performance and flexing and texting and putting people down instead of lifting them up.

And what all that means is that when you see somebody like Sherrod, when you see somebody like Amy, somebody who genuinely cares about people, somebody who has a strong track record and is offering real solutions, somebody who isn’t in it to enrich themselves or because they want the limelight, but because they want to serve, then you’ve got to realize how precious that is. And we’ve got to deliver for them. We’ve got to make sure we elect them as United States senator and as governor.

Because Amy and Sherrod understand this election is not about them. It’s about you. It’s about us.

A Moral Compass and Basic Decency

And there’s one other thing they understand. They understand that what ails us right now, what is throwing our country so out of kilter, it’s not just about prices. It’s not just about economics. Those things are really important. But it’s also about values. There is a moral component to the choices we face right now.

We are not going to fix the economic system or the political system that’s broken. We’re not going to unrig our economy so long as we’ve got a culture where anything goes and where people in the highest offices in the land think it’s okay to lie and cheat and bully and where money is the only measure of our worth.

And that’s part of what’s going on right now. We have lost touch with those things that really matter in life. Caring for our families and helping our neighbors and looking after our children and laughing with them and hugging them and keeping our word and having integrity and treating other people with respect.

Just basic stuff. Stuff that used to be wasn’t Democratic or it wasn’t Republican. It was American. It was human. It was how we treat each other. Just basic decency. Yeah. That’s what we are missing in our public discourse, just basic decency.

We need to remember the words of a 25-year-old preacher who gave a sermon in 1954 where he said, “If we are to go forward today, we’ve got to go back and rediscover some mighty precious values that we’ve left behind.” That was Martin Luther King Jr. at 25 years old.

He said, “We haven’t learned how to be just. We haven’t learned how to be honest and kind and true and loving, and that is the basis of our problem.” The real problem, he said, is that “through our scientific genius, we have made a world of neighborhood, but through our moral and our spiritual genius, we failed to make it a brotherhood.”

In Ohio, what was true then is true today. Yes. We need to lower costs. We need to put money in people’s pockets. Yes. We need to end this war and the corruption in Washington, but we don’t do any of those things if we don’t fix our moral compass as a nation, if we don’t return to some of those old-fashioned virtues, if our fundamental attitude to each other is to try and hurt other people so they don’t hurt us first, if we’re driven by fear instead of by hope.

If we think it’s okay to snatch children from parents or cut programs for the aged or the infirm so the powerful can get whatever they want, we will continue to fester in anger and division. And I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being angry. And I’m tired of being divided.

I want to… I’m going to reach out and shake my neighbor’s hand. I want to get to work doing something for somebody else. We didn’t get into this moment overnight. We won’t get out of it overnight. And none of us should pretend that any single person in any single office is somehow going to save the day for us and that the rest of us can just go back to acting the same way. We’re going to have to all make some changes.

An Inflection Point for America

But Ohio… Here’s what I know. This election can be a start. This election can be an inflection point. This election can be a course correction in America’s long journey toward a more perfect union.

Because if we’re willing to turn out in big numbers here in Ohio and across the country, if we’re willing to vote for change and vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, then this election might just mark the moment this country began moving in a better direction. When we leave our worst impulses behind and start aligning our politics with our highest ideals.

Ohio, you and I have proved before that it is hard to stop a change whose time has come. In ten days, you have a chance to do it again.

So I’m asking you, are you fired up? Are you ready to go? Let’s make Amy Acton governor. Let’s make Sherrod Brown senator. Let’s get on the path to making America better. Thank you. I love you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.

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