Legendary Actor Dick Van Dyke has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Van Dyke, known for his roles in “Mary Poppins” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” made his endorsement public Monday with a video on X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram, the HuffPost reported.
Van Dyke, 98, invoked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and a speech he gave in at a King rally 1964.
“VOTE!!! @KamalaHarris @VP @KamalaHQ,” he tagged in the overline.
“Hi, I’m Dick Van Dyke. You may remember I used to sing and dance and fall down a lot,” he said, in reference to the opening sequence of the “Dick Van Dyke Show” when he falls over an ottoman.
Van Dyke said he found a copy of the speech he gave on May 31, 1964, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The copy written by “The Twilight Zone” creator and host Rod Serling.
“I think it means as much today if not more than it did then, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to read it,” Van Dyke said.
“Hatred is not the norm,” Van Dyke read. “Prejudice is not the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating — none of those are the transcendent facets of the human personality. They’re diseases. They are the cancers of the soul. They are the infectious and contagious viruses that have been bleeding humanity for years. And because they have been and because they are, is it necessary that they shall be? I think not.”
At the end of the video, Van Dyke referred back 60 years, stating, “1964. A lot’s happened. Not so much as Martin Luther [King] dreamed of, but it’s a start.”
