Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks during a campaign rally on the Ellipse on October 29, 2024 in Washington, DC.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Kamala Harris described Donald Trump as a “petty tyrant” and “wannabe dictator” as she called on voters to shut the door on the country’s political divisions and entrust her to unite the nation a week before the U.S.’s Nov. 5 election.
At her largest event of the campaign, a Tuesday evening rally in Washington billed as her closing argument to voters, Ms. Harris warned that, if returned to the White House, the former president would use prison sentences and the military to shut down his political opponents.
“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,” Ms. Harris said. “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are.”
She spoke at the Ellipse, a Washington park off the National Mall where Mr. Trump rallied his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. “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.
Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is displayed on a screen as she delivers a speech, on the National Mall, one week before the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, in Washington on Oct. 29.Carlos Barria/Reuters
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of people turned out for Ms. Harris, filling up a secure perimeter in the park and spilling out onto the Mall, where they packed the hill around the Washington Monument on the mild autumn evening. They wore bracelets that lit up red and blue.
Framed by signs reading “freedom” and with the White House lit up behind her, Ms. Harris repeatedly called out Mr. Trump by name. She cast the vote as a choice between his “chaos and division” and her promised conciliatory approach to running the world’s wealthiest country. She also framed it as a contrast between his “enemies list” and her “to-do list.”
“We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict,” 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.”
The speech comes as the Democratic Vice-President and the Republican former president are neck-and-neck in the polls. And it continues a pivot by Ms. Harris from earlier efforts to dismiss Mr. Trump back to warnings about the threat he represents to democracy.
Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris walks onstage during a campaign rally on the Ellipse on Oct. 29 in Washington, DC.Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Ms. Harris framed the moment in historical terms, describing how the U.S.’s founders “wrested freedom from a petty tyrant” and listing the Second World War, and movements for Civil Rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights as having expanded the country’s freedoms.
“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. “The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”
The Vice-President also tried to tackle her party’s greatest liabilities in the race for the White House: voter anger over inflation and fear over migration at the country’s southern border.
On the first, Ms. Harris listed promises to build more housing, lower the costs of prescription drugs and childcare, and pass a child tax credit. She accused Mr. Trump of being primarily interested in passing tax cuts for rich people, repealing the Affordable Care Act and jacking up prices on consumer goods via his proposed 10 to 20 per cent tariff on all imports.
On the second, she tried to walk a fine line between promising tougher measures at the border and also making it easier for at least some people, such as farmworkers and people who were brought undocumented to the country as children, to obtain citizenship.
“When I am President, we will quickly remove those who arrive here unlawfully,” she said. “At the same time, we must acknowledge we are a nation of immigrants.”
Ms. Harris also tried to thread the needle in paying tribute to President Joe Biden, with whom she said she had been “honoured” to work, while trying to distance herself from his unpopularity. “I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office. My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different,” she said.
Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris warned crowds gathered for her biggest rally that her Republican opponent was seeking unchecked power, while Donald Trump spent the day trying to move on from the storm over racist comments made by a comedian at one of his weekend rallies.
Reuters
The speech included an extended attack on Mr. Trump over abortion – arguably his single largest policy liability – and a jab at his efforts to cultivate closer relationships with U.S. adversaries while getting into arguments with allied countries.
The former president’s three chosen Supreme Court justices helped tilt the court’s ideological balance to the right and all voted in favour of overturning Roe v. Wade protections on abortion in 2022. Polling has since shown a majority of Americans, including many Republicans, favour abortion rights.
“I believe in the fundamental freedom of Americans to make decisions about their own bodies and not have their government tell them what to do,” Ms. Harris said.
She added that Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un are probably rooting for Mr. Trump to win. “World leaders think that Donald Trump is an easy mark, easy to manipulate with flattery and favour.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters attempted unsuccessfully to disrupt the rally. Several inside the event’s secure perimeter shouted “arms embargo now” at the start of the speech until they were ejected by security. A larger group outside the perimeter banged drums and blared a siren as Ms. Harris’s supporters drowned them out with chants of “U.S.A.” Ms. Harris continued speaking throughout.
While the Washington area is heavily Democratic, Ms. Harris’s rally was aimed at a national audience, including in the seven swing states likely to decide the election. It comes two days after a similar attempt by Mr. Trump to make a final case for himself with a splashy rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Mr. Trump’s event drew swift condemnation for a string of racist and sexist comments by his warmup speakers.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage,” and cracked jokes about Black people carving watermelons for Hallowe’en and Latinos not using birth control. Businessman Grant Cardone, meanwhile, referred to Ms. Harris’s “pimp handlers” and David Rem, a friend of Mr. Trump’s, described Ms. Harris as the “Antichrist.”
Mr. Trump, who is trying to make inroads among traditionally Democratic Black and Hispanic voters, claimed on Tuesday not to know who Mr. Hinchcliffe is.
The former president himself has drawn opprobrium for increasingly dark rhetoric in recent weeks, referring to his opponents as “the enemy from within” and musing about using the military on “radical left lunatics.”
On Tuesday, he tried to turn the tables on the Democrats by seizing on a comment in which Mr. Biden appeared to refer to Mr. Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” On a livestream with the group Voto Latino, Mr. Biden seemed to stumble over his words as he condemned Mr. Hinchcliffe. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters, his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American,” Mr. Biden said.
In a statement, Mr. Biden said his “garbage” comment referred specifically to “the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter.” In a transcript of the call, the White House rendered the word “supporter’s” as possessive to suggest Mr. Biden was talking about Mr. Hinchcliffe’s comments.
Mr. Trump used the apparent gaffe to undercut Ms. Harris’s message of unity. On X, the former president accused Ms. Harris of “running a campaign of hate,” pointing to Mr. Biden’s comment. “You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American People. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have shown they are both unfit to be President of the United States,” he wrote. His campaign swiftly sent out fundraising messages reading “Joe Biden said you’re garbage.”
The Democrats aimed on Tuesday to strike a contrast with the tone of Mr. Trump’s rally by showcasing a big-tent approach at Ms. Harris’s event.
Ms. Harris’s rally speakers included Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died of sepsis because doctors refused to treat her pregnancy complications out of fear of running afoul of the state’s abortion ban; Craig Sicknick, the brother of U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke after defending the Capitol on Jan. 6; and Bob and Kristina Lange, two Republican Pennsylvania farmers who previously voted for Mr. Trump but are now backing Ms. Harris.
At least two officers who defended the Capitol, Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell, were in the audience.