De Blasio Tells Dems: You are MAGA’s Nightmare. But you are America’s Sweet Dream.

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered a rousing speech to a packed audience of 460 people at the 2025 Udall Dinner in Tucson, Arizona, sponsored by the Pima County Democratic Party. This is a transcript of his remarks.

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My friends, we live in a very large country. I came all the way across this country to bring you a very simple, powerful message. The Democratic Party is alive and well and living in Pima County, Arizona.

This evening, I have seen the best of this party. Literally, I have seen the power of this party, the meaning of this party, why we matter, what we can do, what we are capable of. I’ve seen our solidarity, our unity, our energy, our fight. It’s all been clear. Speaker after speaker of the energy, the people, the humanity showing all of us who we are.

And I remind you that what’s happening in Washington, D.C., is a relentless attempt to take away from us our own identity, our own sense of purpose, and our own belief in ourselves. It is systematic. It’s very well-organized psychological warfare at its best. What’s happening is an attempt to tell you in the end that you do not matter, that you can’t win, that you don’t have what it takes.

But in just the last few hours, all of you put the lie to that very diabolical strategy. Just in these last few hours, you’ve shown each other what you are capable of in this moment, and this is not a small room. I want to give credit to everyone to put this together. This is not a small room. This is a small army here in this ballroom.

Scare the Bejesus out of MAGA

Because this is exactly the kind of room, exactly the kind of gathering that scares the Bejesus out of certain people in Washington, DC. They do not want to see you all organized in the same place in this fashion. Because when you do, you’re showing that all the propaganda that they put out, all the lies just don’t penetrate. They don’t get to you. They don’t stomp you.

I could feel the energy when I arrived just outside the ballroom. I could feel this extraordinary energy of people so deeply committed to your community, to your state, to your country, to your party. That is an unstoppable force. Amazing people have been up here this evening.

I’m not going to belabor any of this. I’ll make it short and sweet in a long night. But the honorees tonight have been such examples of our strength, of our ability to fight through anything. People talked about different struggles in the past. We all fought through those struggles. And our predecessors did. Our ancestors did. We never stopped.

We’re here today, gathered because people fought and won each of those battles and kept leaving. And I assure you, there were bad days out there. There were days when people felt like giving up. We would not literally, we would not be here if they had given up and thank God Almighty.

They never did. They never did.

“They want you to fear them, but actually they fear you. They fear young Democrats who are organized and energized.”

There’s something beautiful about the way people get involved. And each of you has a story of what sparked it, what made you feel something, and forgive yourself and go out there and knock on those doors and talk to people, including folks who didn’t agree with you at first, but maybe over time, you got a message across that matter to them.

Every one of you had that spark and then something that sustained it. I’ll only say a small personal point. One day, I was in high school, there was a presidential election. It seemed like it was a time, an important time to get involved. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, and I got on a subway train.

I went to a campaign headquarters in Boston and walked in the door. I didn’t know how to volunteer, so I just walked in the door and up to the first person I saw. I said, “I’d like to volunteer to help Mo Udall become president of the United States.”

I have no idea that some years later, I would have the honor of speaking at the Udall dinner. Isn’t life interesting?

But in that same vein, it’s a very personal matter I have to give from my heart to honor someone whom I have the joy of being partners with. and spoke to you earlier. I thought that the energy Nomiki Konst brought was amazing because she has for her whole life, starting very young, she decided to devote herself to this party and to making sure our democratic party was actually democratic in the way we did things, and that we listened to people. We brought people in and fought for the values we care about. So, I want to thank Nomiki Konst for all of us.

So I’m going to be very quick. Now, I’m going to do a little bit of a lightning round. We can talk really fast in New York City. So why? Why do our opponents, the people who want to undermine our democracy, who want to take away the rights that we have fought for, who want to take our nation backward, why would they not like the view that I have right now from this podium?

What confounds and confuses MAGA is the sight of hundreds of people gathered in a room in Pima County, Arizona, preparing, their moral ammunition for the fight ahead.

Because it epitomizes the fact that people in this room know how to organize and know how to talk to people, and know how to listen to people. But we sometimes forget what we have done. This is a bit of a disease sometimes the Democrats have, and certainly, for those of us who call ourselves progressives, we sometimes forget our victories.

Strange thing. I don’t think the other side has this problem bluntly. I think they’re very self-satisfied,

But we win a victory, and it seems like the next day, we’re already in the process of forgetting it, and we’re on for the next fight. And that’s a beautiful thing. I want to level up, but sometimes, we’ve to stop and look at what we’ve done.

So, we had the election in November. That was tough. We had the inauguration. That was tough. We had those first executive orders. That was tough, and that was often very weird.

But then, did you see how people started to get back on their feet on April 5th in 1,200 locations in the United States of America? All 50 states, there were protests against what the Trump administration is doing. They were at 1,200 locations across this nation simultaneously in one day.

Now, I do not want to belittle what the other team brings to the table. They won an election. They didn’t win it by a lot, but they won an election. But I have never, ever seen them simultaneously have a rally in 1,200 different cities in this country on one day.

They have never done that.

We have champions like Bernie Sanders and AOC traveling around the country to hold rallies. We have tens of thousands of people, and they held those rallies in purple states and red states. They didn’t just go where it was easy, and they had tens of thousands of people show up.

The Republican members of Congress cannot hold a town hall meeting in their own districts anymore because people will come out and say, what are you doing to us? Imagine they can’t even show their faces in their own districts.

Now, if you’re thinking about the elections next year, the midterms. You sure as hell would rather be us who can go and talk to people and say, “Something’s wrong, and we’ve got to fix it,” rather than the folks who cannot even show up in public for fear of being protested by their own constituents. Yes.

Elon Musk invested $20 million in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and he lost. I would personally like him to get involved in more elections. I’ll take his money and burn it in front of his face. Meanwhile, despite his bluster, President Trump has the lowest popularity ratings of any president at this point in his presidency in the history of the United States,

Trumpers have buyer’s remorse

People who voted for him often did so out of profound frustration with the status quo, driven by honest frustration, economic pain, fear, insecurity, or the challenges they faced during the COVID pandemic. There were reasons that people were feeling pain. I don’t belittle those who made that choice. But a lot of them are saying, what did I do? Talk about buyer’s remorse, a lot of them.

And you can see it, and you see it poll after poll; you start actually to believe it. They’re saying, “No, this guy actually isn’t doing what he said he would do.” In fact, they don’t have faith in him anymore on the economy on caring about them.

This is where we now go back on the offensive. This is where we go back to the people and remind ’em who we are. And we have to listen to people. We have to show humility to people. We have to show what’s going on at their kitchen table, trying to pay their bills, trying to make sure their kids have a better future. That is our fight, too.

So, I’ll conclude it this way tonight. There are people in Washington. There are people in the White House, the people in the MAGA movement who would love to look at your faces and see sadness. They would love you to be depressed. They would love you to feel that you have lost your momentum and your hope.

This is what they want. They want you hopeless. They want you to cower. They want you to feel that whatever you have in the past, you don’t have anymore. They want you to believe somehow, history has ended, and they’ve cracked the code. And you don’t get it. They tell you, you have lost the working class forever.

Bald-faced MAGA lies

Republicans tell you that people in the African American Latino communities turned against you, and it’s a permanent condition. They tell you that something happened in the 2024 election that has literally never happened before in history. They voted a certain way, and then they’ll never, ever come back again.

Or people stayed home, and you’ll never be able to convince them to come out and vote again. They said people didn’t like your candidate one time; therefore, they’ll never like your candidates ever. They’re trying to convince you of bald-faced lies. They’re trying to convince you of things that we all know from our own experience are absolutely impossible.

And yet they just repeat it and repeat it, and they want you to somehow. Be intoxicated or entranced by their confidence. They love it when you’re feeling down. They love it when some, not in this room, but some who might share some of our values. Talk about leaving the country, giving up the fight, and going to where it’s safe and easy.

They love that. But you know what they hate. You know what? They cannot abide. What confounds and confuses them is the sight of hundreds of people gathered in a room in Pima County, Arizona, preparing, their moral ammunition for the fight ahead. They cannot stand to see soldiers battle. Strong soldiers who are experienced, who care, they cannot stand to see you all together preparing for battle, impervious to the ups and downs.

This room tonight inspires me. What inspires me even more is this is not the only room tonight where this is happening. This is not the only county. This may be one of the most important by far. No question.

Young Dems are the MAGA nightmare.

All in this country, I can tell you, you are decidedly not alone. But this room tonight is a nightmare. They thought they were living in a dream world, and then if they saw what I’m seeing, they would realize they had woken up in a nightmare of their own creation because their contradictions are becoming clearer and clearer in the people who are watching.

So the final point is this. They want you to fear them, but actually, they fear you. They fear young Democrats who are organized and energized.

They fear women who will fight for their right to choose and make their labor unions that will fight for work.

And everyone who’s ever been involved in electoral politics knows every constituency matters. Every human being matters, but they especially fear when our seniors decide enough is enough. And they won’t have their rights stolen from them.

So you are a nightmare, but you are America’s sweet dream. Thank you.