With a week to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing message at a massive rally of 75,000 people who gathered to watch the Democratic nominee speak at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
With the White House lit up behind her, Harris urged the fired up crowd and Americans watching to embrace a “new generation of leadership,” while calling for unity among the parties. “We like a good debate,” she said. “And the fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within. They are family, neighbors, classmates, coworkers. They are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”
“America, for too long, we have been consumed with too much division, chaos, and mutual distrust,” she said. “And it can be easy then to forget a simple truth: It doesn’t have to be this way. We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear, and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.”
Harris firmly laid out two distinct visions for the nation. “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. “Unlike Donald Trump I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”
“America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant,” Harris said toward the end of her impassioned speech, a reference to Republican candidate Donald Trump. “Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing, proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure.”
In recent weeks, Harris and her surrogates have been attempting to press the point that Trump remains a threat to democracy, and will govern as an authoritarian if allowed to return to power. Her choice of venue on Tuesday was no accident.
In an interview with CNN, Harris Campaign Manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said that the decision to hold the speech in the Ellipse was an intentional callback to Trump’s own rally at the location of Jan. 6, 2021, where the former president stoked the violent attack on the Capitol.
“It’s really a reminder of the gravity of the job, how much a president can do for good and for bad, to shape the country and impact people’s lives,” she said. “But it’s also a stark visualization of probably the most infamous example of Donald Trump and how he’s used his power for bad, really focusing on himself and spreading division and chaos and inciting a mob to try to maintain his own power and put himself over the country.”
Trump is also attempting to make a bold statement in his own closing campaign events. On Sunday, the former president held a vitriolic, hate filled rally in Madison Square Garden, the iconic entertainment heart of the city that made him.
The rally featured speakers who made racist jokes about Latinos, Puerto Ricans, and Black Americans; a declaration from Trump adviser Stephen Miller that “America is for Americans and for Americans only;” and a sardonic description of Harris by Tucker Carlson as “the first Samoan-Malaysian low-IQ former California prosecutor” to potentially be elected president. Trump repeated his standard slew of immigrant bashing, and once again doubled down on promises to purge “the enemy from within” from American civil society.
The rally drew intense public backlash, particularly from prominent celebrities and members of the Puerto Rican community, as well as a scramble by the Trump campaign and other Republicans to distance themselves from the commentary of the former president’s guests.
The contrasting visions from the two campaigns could not be more stark as the candidates attempt to close a tumultuous electoral cycle with a bang.
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