(AFP) – Kamala Harris will urge Americans to turn the page on Donald Trump when she delivers her closing election argument Tuesday on the spot where her rival rallied supporters before the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack. With polls in a dead heat exactly one week before Election Day, the Democratic vice president’s campaign said she chose the symbolic site to push her case that the Republican former president is a threat to American democracy.
But Harris will also deliver an “optimistic and hopeful” message, a senior campaign official said, amid rumblings in the party that she is focusing too much on Trump and not enough on her own policies. “We are very focused on making sure we’re doing everything in our power to reach the voters that are still making up their mind and making sure they hear directly from the vice president,” Harris’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Tuesday. “This speech is really designed to reach those undecided voters.”
Police in the US capital have said they expect more than 50,000 people on the Ellipse, a park outside the White House where Trump delivered a fiery speech in which he ramped up his false claims that he won the 2020 election. Trump supporters then marched on the Capitol to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, in an assault that left 140 police officers wounded. Harris’s campaign said in a statement that the former prosecutor would deliver a “major closing argument” and “make the case that it is time to turn the page on Trump and chart a new way forward.”
For his part, Trump, who at 78 is the oldest presidential nominee in US history, tried to take the sting out of Harris’s speech with a campaign event of his own, in front of a room of supporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His remarks came as he was seeking to tamp down the firestorm over his weekend rally in New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden, at which a warm-up comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” His campaign has tried to distance him from the remarks, with Trump already on the defensive over accusations by his former White House chief of staff that he would rule as a fascist dictator.
Trump said the event was a “love fest,” the same phrase he used to describe the Capitol riot. “Politicians that have been doing this for a long time, 30 and 40 years, said there’s never been an event so beautiful,” he said. “It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved.” The Republican will rally later in blue-collar Allentown, in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial of the seven battleground states that are expected to decide the election — and a city that is home to a large Puerto Rican community.
Fears of chaos hang heavy over this year’s election, with Trump indicating that he might again refuse to accept the result if he loses. The 2024 White House race has already been one of the most divisive in modern times, with Harris and Trump completely deadlocked as they offer two starkly contrasting visions. Trump has survived two assassination attempts, while Harris has replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket following his shock exit.
The vice president has increasingly zeroed in on Trump’s harsh rhetoric on migrants and stance on abortion. On Tuesday, Harris is expected to echo her recent comments that Trump would focus on an “enemies list” if he returns to the White House, while she would have a “to-do list” to lower costs for Americans. The first female, Black and Asian American vice president in US history will rely heavily on the visuals of being within sight of the White House, with the campaign describing it as a symbol of presidential power and unity.
But she will also seek to remind Americans of the dark time around the 2021 riot. Harris’s campaign said she would take her message from the Ellipse speech on the road to battleground states during the last week of the election. Both candidates will keep up a punishing schedule in the final days until November 5, sometimes hitting three or more states in one day.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
