Kamala Harris delivers closing campaign pitch in Washington DC

The vice president spoke at the Ellipse in Washington DC, the same site where Donald Trump told his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ shortly before the 2021 Capitol riot.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris urged voters to reject Donald Trump’s efforts to sow division and fear as she made the ‘closing argument’ of her campaign in Washington DC.
With one week to go before Election Day, Harris attempted to draw contrasts between her and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, by delivering her speech from the same spot on the Ellipse where the former president spoke shortly before the Capitol insurrection in 2021.
Harris then began her speech by by reminding voters of Trump’s role in 6 January riots, when he spewed falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election that inspired a crowd to march to the Capitol and try unsuccessfully to halt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
She brought up his threats to use the military against his political rivals and his labelling of those who disagree with him as “the enemy from within.”
“Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” she said. Trump, she added, “has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other.”
“This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” she said, branding Trump a “petty tyrant” and “wannabe dictator.”
Harris continued: “But America, I am here tonight to say: That’s not who we are.” She added, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Harris also sought to use her largest remaining stage before polls close to make a broader case for why voters should reject Trump and consider what she offers, while still introducing herself to voters clamouring for more information.
The White House gleaming behind her, Harris encouraged the crowd to visualise their divergent futures depending on who wins on Election Day.
“In less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office,” she said. “On Day One, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”
Harris went on to list key policy goals, including expanding Medicare coverage of home health care, boosting the supply of housing in the country and working to restore nationwide access to abortion.
Her speech drew a massive crowd to Washington, with supporters spilling out toward the Washington Monument on the National Mall.
More critically, her campaign hopes the setting will help catch the attention of battleground state voters who remain on the fence about whom to vote for — or whether to vote at all.
Biden told reporters Tuesday that he would not attend Harris’ speech because the event is “for her,” but he sparked a firestorm ahead of Harris’ remarks.
Reacting to a comic calling Puerto Rico garbage at a Trump rally last weekend, Biden said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The Trump campaign has since responded, with its national press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying the Democratic campaign has “labelled these great Americans as fascists, Nazis, and now, garbage”.
Meanwhile, a statement released by the Trump campaign accused the vice-president of resorting to “lying, name-calling and clinging to the past to avoid admitting the truth” in her speech.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt added “Kamala’s first day in office was over 1,300 days ago, and she has spent the past four years working hand-in-hand with Joe Biden to destroy our country.”
Republican former President Donald Trump has also held a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Hispanic population.
It comes after Trump called his closing rally at Madison Square Garden a ‘lovefest’, despite featuring a number of crude remarks by various speakers, including a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.”
Some of Trump’s top Republican allies have condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not the other comments.
But given the opportunity to apologise at multiple events and in interviews Tuesday, Trump instead leaned in. Speaking at his Florida resort, he said that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York.
“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honour to be involved.”