Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her harshest rebuke yet of former President Donald Trump at the same place Trump rallied his own supporters before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot almost four years ago.
In an attempt to create a memorable political split screen seven days before polls close, Harris addressed a sizeable crowd of people at the Ellipse against the backdrop of the White House. Harris, describing Trump as “unstable,” “obsessed with revenge,” “consumed with grievance,” and “out for unchecked power,” asked voters for their support over the sound of sirens and protesters in and outside the park.
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“Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant,” Harris told the crowd Tuesday. “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.”
“They did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives, only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she said.
Harris contended Trump’s priorities for a second administration included prosecuting people on his “enemies list” and “set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers on Jan. 6,” using the “military against American citizens who simply disagree with him” or, in his own words, “the enemy from within.”
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is,” she said. “America, I am here tonight to say: That’s not who we are.”
The Harris campaign selected the Ellipse to underscore the choice being presented to voters regarding the next occupant of the Oval Office where Trump spoke to his supporters before some of them marched to the Capitol to stop the certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021.
It also presented an opportunity for the vice president to have a viral moment and troll Trump over his crowd sizes. The campaign said 75,000 people were at the Ellipse and nearby on the National Mall on Tuesday, in comparison to the 53,000 people who were there for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally four years ago.
Neither the National Park Service nor the Metropolitan Police Department conduct official counts of crowd sizes.
Confessing that she is still introducing herself to many voters, Harris told the crowd she would “seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better,” with the hope of making “progress” and not scoring “political points.”
“I pledge to listen to experts,” the vice president said. “To those who will be impacted by the decisions I make. And to people who disagree with me. 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 my table.”
“I pledge to be a president for all Americans,” she continued. “To always put country above party and above self.”
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The Harris campaign previewed the vice president’s Ellipse speech as an appeal to undecided voters, many of whom it described as lower information voters who need to be persuaded to mobilize, including suburban women, independents, and centrist Republicans.
The vice president did that on Tuesday by discussing her proposals for the middle class, such as her plan for the economy, healthcare, immigration, and foreign policy, criticizing Trump for his abortion and tax positions, and encouraging voters to turn the page for a new generation of leadership.
People in the crowd, from the Washington, D.C., area to Florida, waved flags and “freedom” placards, some wearing Harris-Walz camouflage baseball caps and others donning the p**** cat beanies from protests of Trump’s win in 2016. One volunteer had a comma and “La” painted on his cheek, a reminder of how to pronounce the vice president’s name.
Carol T., 57, a Maryland registered nurse, was not “nervous” about next week’s election, but conceded it would be a “step back” if Harris, potentially the first minority woman, did not win.
“They did that in 2016 with Hillary Clinton,” she told the Washington Examiner. “C’mon. What’s going on? The women are more qualified than the men that have won since they have been running. So what is it? It’s not a man’s world anymore. It’s 2024.”
Melissa Schutte, 56, a Washington, D.C., government consultant, was “energized” and “very, very hopeful,” despite conversations she has had with people considering “sitting out because they are disenchanted” over issues, including the Gaza war.
“I’m frustrated that people say they don’t understand her policy. She has policy. Go to her website. Listen to her campaign speeches,” Schutte told the Washington Examiner. “At the end of the day, what kind of country do you want to live in? If you don’t vote and he wins, you have yourself to blame for the backward nature that our country could go.”
Trump counter-programmed Harris’s Ellipse speech with a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago private resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday morning and his own rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night.
During his press conference, Trump announced that his administration would seize assets from criminal gangs and drug cartels for a compensation fund for victims of illegal immigrant crime. His rally in majority-minority Allentown comes after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe joked during his Madison Square Garden event in New York City on Sunday that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.”
Puerto Rico shadow Sen. Zoraida Buxo endorsed him during the Tuesday rally. The demographic is important in Pennsylvania because there are about 472,000 Puerto Ricans in the commonwealth that President Joe Biden won in 2020 by 81,000 votes.
“I’m running on a plan to save America,” Trump said in Florida on Tuesday. “It’s going to be saving it from the incredible destruction that’s been caused by Crooked Joe Biden and Kamala. She’s running on a campaign of demoralization, destruction, and hate.”
Three months into Harris’s historically short campaign, the vice president has been repeatedly asked how she would be different from Biden if she is elected president next week. Biden was behind her during her speech, not onstage but in the White House, having spent the day promoting his Investing in America agenda in Baltimore.
Biden will be in Philadelphia on Friday for a battleground state event underscoring his support of unions that was uncoordinated with the Harris campaign as reports circulate concerning a deteriorating relationship between the White House and what was once the president’s campaign.
On Tuesday, Harris said she has been honored to serve as Biden’s vice president but that she would bring her own experiences and ideas to her administration.
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“My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different,” she said. “Our top priority as a nation four years ago was to end the pandemic and rescue the economy. Now our biggest challenge is to lower costs, costs that were rising even before the pandemic, and that are still too high. I get it.”
After her Ellipse speech, Harris is anticipated to campaign in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on Wednesday, and Arizona and Nevada on Thursday, with more than 50 million people having already voted before the Nov. 5 election, an increasing number of whom are Republicans, who have tended not to cast their ballots early in the past.
