The Best — And Most WTF — Moments of the Democratic National Convention
The Democratic National Convention wrapped up Thursday night with Kamala Harris accepting the party’s nomination for president. It was a rousing end to a four-day party in Chicago’s United Center, one that was jam-packed with big-name speakers, bumping musical performances, and unbridled enthusiasm over Harris’ campaign, which is somehow only a month old with the election right around the corner.
The DNC has been lauded as a success, providing a powerful launchpad for Harris and her running mate Tim Walz to bring home their campaign for the White House — but the week still featured its share of WTF moments. The logistics around the arena were not ideal, the fossil-fuel industry was present, and the Democratic Party refused to allow a pro-Palestine voice to speak onstage.
Here are some of the most memorable moments from the convention, good and bad:
THE BEST
Harris and Walz blowing the roof off the arena
If Walz is the campaign’s coach, Harris is its quarterback, and the two are in lock-step.
On Wednesday, Walz delivered what he described as a “pep talk” for the nation from their coach. “Let me finish with this, team,” he said. “It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And boy, do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is experienced. And Kamala Harris is ready.”
That message carried into Friday, when Harris delivered her own acceptance speech and made the case for herself as the best candidate to take on Trump. “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she said, but the consequences “of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”
The two speeches exemplified the balance between the candidates on the Democratic ticket, with Walz acting as the campaign’s motivator and hype man while giving Harris the space to lean into her career roots and prosecute the case against Trump.
Editor’s picks
The roll call
The most reliably boring part of every party nominating convention is the roll call vote, during which delegates from every state and territory cast their votes for the prospective candidates. It wasn’t boring at the 2024 DNC.
DJ Cassidy, whose resume includes Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s wedding as well as Obama White House parties, selected songs to represent every delegation — in many cases with help from the delegations. Highlights included Chappell Roan for Missouri, Kendrick Lamar for California, Tom Petty for Florida, Kansas for Kansas, and the Dropkick Murphys for Massachusetts.
But the unquestionable star of the roll call was Georgia, whose moment in the spotlight featured an in-person appearance by Lil Jon, who performed his hits “Shots” and “Turn Down for What.”
The return of Michelle Obama (and also her husband)
It’s been more than 10 years since former First Lady Michelle Obama gave a nationally televised address, and her return to the DNC blew the roof off of the United Center.
Obama called back to the election of her husband, former President Barack Obama, speaking about “the contagious power of hope” generated by the enthusiasm surrounding Harris’ campaign.
The former first lady has never been shy about calling balls and strikes, but Tuesday’s speech was a far cry from her infamous declaration that “when they go low, we go high,” and she had no qualms about publicly eviscerating Trump. “I want to know who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” she said.
“If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. We put our heads down. We get to work in America, we do something,” she added to ground-shaking cheers from the audience.”
Michelle’s address may have stolen the show from her husband’s headlining speech, with the former president even quipping that he’s “the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.”
That big Project 2025 book
Ideas can often be hard to translate into real-world action. Conservatives hoping for another Trump presidency decided to write all of their worst ones down in Project 2025, a 900-page plan to restrict the rights of Americans and give the president an unprecedented amount of power.
Multiple DNC speakers used a giant physical copy of Project 2025 as a prop to represent the Republican agenda.
Host Keenan Thompson stole the bit though, asking the audience if they’d ever seen “a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Here it is.”
Taking aim at Trump
Democrats have long been propping Trump up as a menacing force set to dismantle American democracy. Speakers at the DNC appeared to adopt a new tactic in taking on the former president: reframing Trump as a subject of mockery.
Democrats trolled the president Sunday night by projecting “Trump-Vance Weird as Hell” onto Trump Tower in Chicago. The next night, Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr joked that in November “we can tell Donald Trump ‘night night,’” mimicking Steph Curry’s famous sleep celebration. The next night, the Obamas both made fun of Trump, with Michelle making a dig about how the presidency could be a “Black job” and Barack mocking his obsession with crowd sizes, making a gesture with his that many took to represent the small size of something else. Earlier that night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called him a “two-bit union buster who thinks of himself as more of a patriot than a woman who fights to lift working people up every single day.” On Wednesday, Bill Clinton made fun of Trump’s obsessions with Hannibal Lecter while turning the focus to his self-obsession, imploring Ameircans to “count the I’s, not the lies” when he speaks. Walz called him “weird” again later that night. Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said he was a “weak man pretending to be strong, a small man pretender to be big” on Thursday, before Harris labeled him as “unserious” during her acceptance speech. Harris cautioned, though, that the consequences should he win in November would be plenty serious.
The musical performances
Beyonce may not have performed as was rumored on Thursday night, but the DNC still featured a star-studded rolodex of musicians who helped turn the convention into a spectacle. Stevie Wonder, John Legend, The Chicks, Pink, and Maren Morris were all featured in the lineup. Lil Jon also made a surprise appearance during the delegation roll call, and the Chicago Bulls’ drumline made the convention feel like a party.
The emotions
For all the performances and inspirational speeches, the DNC was also a deeply emotional event, full of heart-wrenching testimony about the way policy has impacted the lives of Americans.
On Tuesday, several women shared their experiences attempting to secure life saving reproductive care in states with abortion bans. On Wednesday, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American hostage kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, delivered an emotional plea for the return of their son, the other remaining hostages, and a ceasefire that “ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza.” On Thursday, gun violence survivors, their families, and classmates spoke of the trauma they lived through.
The gut wrenching segments echoes the very personal stories shared by some of the convention’s biggest names. President Joe Biden shared an emotional moment with his daughter, Ashley, who introduced him before his primetime speech on Monday night — which included plenty of gratitude from the crowd for the president. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) teared up on Tuesday while sharing a story about Harris’s support for her when she first arrived to Congress, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had to take a moment to collect herself after receiving a more than a minute long standing ovation on Thursday.
Walz’s speech on Wednesday was also highly emotional. His story about conceiving using fertility treatments and a profession of his love for his family in the audience led to tears from just about everyone. “Hope, Gus, and Gwen: you are my entire world and I love you,” Walz said.
THE WTF
Palestinian erasure
The DNC snubbed the Uncommitted Movement — which represents more than 700,000 voters who voted “uncommitted” during the primary to show their support of Palestine — refusing give a pro-Palestine voice time to speak in the United Center.
“I was working on it every day for the past week or more,” James Zogby, a former member of the DNC’s executive committee, told Rolling Stone. “The campaign made a mistake — an unforced error. This didn’t have to happen the way it did and now needs to be fixed.”
Democrats provided a forum that wasn’t televised for the movement, which held a sit-in outside of the arena when they learned they wouldn’t be allowed into the main event Wednesday night. “I was incredibly honored to be considered,” Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American and member of Georgia’s legislature who hoped to give a speech at the convention, told Rolling Stone on Thursday.
Fossil-fuel companies sponsoring events
Not only has the climate crisis not exactly been at the forefront of the Democratic Party’s messaging lately, an off-site event hosted by Punchbowl News was sponsored by ExxonMobil. Climate activists, including DNC member RL Miller, disrupted the event. “Exxon lies, people die!” they chanted.
“Companies like Exxon should have no place at the DNC,” the Sunrise Movement said in a statement. “Exxon has spent decades misleading the public about the climate crisis and buying off politicians. If the Democratic Party wants to be taken seriously by our generation on climate change, they need to walk the talk.”
Conservatives going “undercover”
Is that three raccoons in a Kamala Harris bomber? Or is it just right-wing extremist Matt Walsh wearing a wig?
Members and supporters of the opposite party are always present at nominating conventions, but, for some reason, several prominent Republican figures thought putting on the equivalent of chunky glasses and a mustache would make them unrecognizable to the most politically obsessed crowd in the nation.
Walsh was spotted wearing what looked like a dollar-store wig and an array of Harris pins. Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec attempted to infiltrate a pro-Palestinian protest outside of the DNC wearing sunglasses and a keffiyeh. Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe opted for a mask, glasses, and beanie to cover most of his face.
Probably the most embarrassing display came from MyPillow founder and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who shaved his mustache and donned a jaunty fedora in an attempt to disguise his identity — only to be outed by 12-year-old political influencer Knowa.
Did Lindell try to debate a 12-year-old? Yes. Did he lose? Also yes.
Conservative freaking out because Democratic families love each other
Conservatives took to social media to call Doug Emhoff “weird” for having what appears to be a good relationship with his daughter Ella — whose tattoos and fashion sense have been a lightning rod for buttoned-up conservatives — and Biden “creepy” for hugging his daughter Ashley after she introduced him on Monday.
They later mocked Tim Walz’s son Gus, who has a non-verbal learning disorder, for crying as his father expressed his love for his family during his acceptance speech on Wednesday. “Talk about weird,” Ann Coulter wrote.
Bad fact-checks
Fact-checking politicians is a critical charge of the American press, but during the DNC some outlets have been inexplicably twisting themselves into pretzels to soften Trump’s position on key electoral issues.
The New York Times rated President Joe Biden’s claim that Trump “created the largest debt any president had in four years,” as “misleading,” because — even though Trump did “rack up more debt than any other in raw dollars” — the debt incurred under Obama during his eight-year term was larger. Four versus eight … math is hard, but not that hard.
When Biden said on Monday that Trump wanted to cut Medicare, PolitiFact rated the statement “mostly false” even though Trump repeatedly proposed cutting Medicare during his presidency and in March told reporters that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” But because Trump has backpedaled from the position now that he’s running a tight race for the White House, voters should apparently take him at his word.
Perhaps the most egregious “fact-check” came from The Washington Post, which attempted to push back on Biden’s claim that “Donald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again.” The Post countered that “Trump just hasn’t said that he would accept. And he has previously said the only way he loses is if the Democrats cheat.”
Make it make sense.
Logistical chaos
The DNC was beset by organizational mishaps, with people waiting hours to get into the United Center on Monday. The programming suffered some setbacks, as well, with delays forcing the cancellation of a performance from James Taylor so Joe Biden could take the stage at a reasonable hour on Monday. He still wasn’t able to come on until after primetime, however, with his speech wrapping up after midnight on the East Coast. The DNC blamed the delays on the “raucous applause” causing speakers to take longer than anticipated.
The issues weren’t confined to Monday. The DNC reportedly told journalists on Thursday that they could not be guaranteed entry if they left the arena to go to the bathroom, and at a certain point stopped letting people onto the floor, even turning away Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who spoke at the convention earlier that night.
Trump’s counter-programming
Trump did all he could to wrest the spotlight away from the DNC … kind of. The former president held a series of events during the week, but he wasn’t able to muster much energy — or anything new to say outside of sprinkling fresh batch of sensationalism on his well-worn talking points. “You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread or you get shot,” he claimed, absurdly, during an event to address crime in Michigan. “You get mugged, you get raped, you get … whatever it may be.”
He was also on the defensive. During an event intended to focus on the economy in Pennsylvania, Trump tried to convince factory workers that he’s normal, despite Democrats now regularly alleging that he and his running mate J.D. Vance are weird. “I think we’re extremely normal people,” he insisted.
Trump didn’t do much for his argument that he’s totally not weird by having a full-fledged, multi-platform meltdown during and after Harris’ acceptance speech on Thursday.