Bill Clinton delivered a forceful and deeply personal testimony on behalf of his wife, telling a rapt audience in Philadelphia and millions of American voters to reject Republicans’ caricature of Hillary Clinton and embrace “the real one.”

More than 15 years after he left the White House, the former president on Tuesday night warned that Donald Trump cannot be its next resident and that Hillary Clinton was the clear choice.


Toward the end of a 42-minute address packed with anecdotes and triumphs, Clinton asked a pointed question.

"Now, how does this square? How does this square with the things that you heard at the Republican convention? What is the difference in what I told you and what they said? How do you square it? You can't. One is real, the other is made up," Clinton said. "And — you just have to decide which is which, my fellow Americans. The real one had done more change making — positive change making before she was 30 years old than most politicians do with their whole lives in office."

The "real one," Clinton said, still has friends in Arkansas who have flown across the country "at their own expense to fight for the person they know."

"The real one — the real one has earned the loyalty and respect and fervent support of people who worked with her in every stage of her life, including leaders around the world who know her to be able, straightforward, and completely trustworthy," Bill Clinton said. "The real one calls you when you're sick, when your kid's in trouble, or when there is a death in the family. The real one repeatedly drew praise from prominent Republicans when she was a senator and secretary of state."

He went on to say that Republicans had created a “cartoon” of his wife that doesn’t match with the good-hearted, force of nature he’s known for over four decades.

Pausing, Clinton declared, “Good for you, because earlier today you nominated the real one."

“We gotta get back on schedule, will you guys calm down,” Clinton laughed. “Look, I have lived a long, full, blessed life. It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971. When I was president I worked hard to give you peace and share of prosperity, to give you an America where nobody is invisible or counted out. But, for this time Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face and she is still the best darn change maker I have ever known.”

Clinton closed with a hard sell, proclaiming that his wife "will never quit on you."

It was an emotional speech that also largely focused on Bill and Hillary’s love story, a tale that is not unknown to those who have followed the Clintons during their many decades in public life, but one that could help humanize Clinton, whose favorability numbers are about as low as Trump’s.

Bill Clinton, however, glossed over the years of headline-grabbing infidelity scandals.

He also made sure to not pass up a chance to starkly lay out the differences between his wife and Trump, who has attacked Hillary Clinton as an enabler of the former president’s extramarital pursuits and silencing of accusers.

"And so I say to you, if you love this country and are working hard, paying taxes, obeying the law, and want to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody who wants to send you back," Clinton said. "If you are a Muslim, if you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you. If you are a young African-American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be. Help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside including the people that wear blue to protect our future."

At times rapping his fist against the lectern to emphasize points throughout his speech, Clinton sought to appeal to Americans who, like him, have already lived the majority of their lives.

"Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it because she spent a lifetime doing it. I hope you will do it. I hope you will elect her," he remarked. "Those of us have more yesterdays than tomorrows tend to care more about our children and our grandchildren. The reason you should elect her is the greatest country on Earth, we have always been about tomorrow. Your children and grandchildren will bless you forever if you do."

Bill Clinton: Hillary is the ‘Real One’ Bill Clinton talks about his wife on Wednesday.

Boasting at length about her accomplishments over the course of her decades in public life, Clinton declared, “she did all of this while being a full-time worker, a mother, and enjoying our life.”

“Why? Well, she is insatiably curious, she’s a natural leader, she’s a good organizer, and the best darn change maker I have ever met in my entire life,” Clinton said, as attendees raised signs and cheered. “So look, this is a really important point for you to take out of this convention,” he continued, “If you believe in making change from the bottom-up, if you believe the measure of change is making people’s lives better, you know it is hard and some people think it is boring. Speeches like this are fun. Actually doing the work is hard.”

Indirectly addressing criticism that his wife’s time on the public stage should come to an end, Clinton said, “Some people say, well we need to change. She has been around a long time. She sure has. And she has sure been worth every single year she has put into making people's lives better.”

"Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens," the 42nd president remarked earlier, peppering a year-by-year recap of their early years together with moments of how he met his wife and how she began her career.

Hillary Clinton was "always making things better," he said. "Meanwhile, let's get back to business. I was trying to convince her to marry me," Clinton said, going into the story of how he first proposed to her and she declined.

Pointing to her work with the disadvantaged and disabled, Clinton took another dig at Trump.

"She never made fun of people with disabilities. She tried to empower them based on their abilities. Meanwhile, I was still trying to get her to marry me," he said. "The second time I tried a different tack, I said, 'I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn't do it.'"

Hillary Rodham was not buying it, Clinton said, recounting that he had urged her to run for public office, perhaps in her home state of Illinois or New York.

"She just laughed and said, 'Are you out of your mind? Nobody would ever vote for me,'" Clinton recalled her saying.

But instead, Clinton emphasized, she "decided to take a huge chance" by moving to his home state of Arkansas, for his soon-to-be spouse "a strange place, more rural, more culturally conservative than anywhere she had been, where she knew good and well people were wondering what in the world she was like and whether they should accept her."

Chuckling, Clinton remarked, "Didn't take them long to find out what she was like."

A full two decades after delivering his second and final speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Clinton looked to channel some of his past political success into his wife’s campaign, which has taken a hit in the polls and has, along with Trump, earned a predominantly negative public image.

Clinton has of late stuck to fundraising for his wife’s campaign, though he played a larger public role throughout the primary season and is likely to resume that role leading up to November. He raised eyebrows when on a fundraising trip, he met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on a Phoenix tarmac in late June, as the Justice Department wrapped its investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state. And he mixed it up in April during a spirited defense with Black Lives Matter protesters.

But none of those incidents came close to moments in the 2008 campaign when the former president compared Obama’s performance in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. After backlash ensued, Clinton remarked at different points that there was a “total myth and mugging” and that the Obama campaign “played the race card on me.”

Minutes before Clinton spoke, Trump delivered a prebuttal of the reaction to Clinton, whose 2012 speech was widely viewed as one of the convention’s highlights. (His first appearance on the national stage in 1988 was less warmly received.)

“No matter what Bill Clinton says and no matter how well he says it, the phony media will exclaim it to be incredible. Highly overrated!” Trump tweeted.

Trump has not shied away from attacking both Clintons on a regular basis throughout the primary and early general election campaign. During an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in May, the then-presumptive nominee raised the shadow of past sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton, including rape. Days later, Trump released a video featuring the voices of some past Clinton accusers, featuring a black-and-white photo of the former president chomping on a cigar.

Himself no stranger to the convention stage, Clinton finessed and fiddled with the speech—his seventh straight at the DNC—away from his wife’s closest aides as the clock ticked down to his prime-time moment at Wells Fargo Center.

Clinton spoke after a six-minute, 17-second video that extolled his biography and work as president from 1993 to 2001 and after, through the Clinton Foundation.

The video largely centered on a series of people who wrote to Clinton as president thanking him for his work and its impact on their lives and families over the last quarter century, while also touching on his work with the foundation.

“I will still write my own life story,” Clinton said at the end of the film. “That’s what I tried to make people believe they could do.”

However the speech played on TV, it was a hit in the hall.

"He did an outstanding job," said Rodney McFarland, a delegate from Louisiana who was wearing a donkey hat. "There's a clear path to the White House," he said, feeling more confident now than when he arrived in Philadelphia.

"There were times during this speech when you could hear a pin drop because the crowd was so captivated," said South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison. "His mission tonight: personalize Hillary the woman, the mother, the visionary. The change maker. Guess what: He succeeded."

Gabriel Debenedetti and Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.