With one week to go until voters decide whether to promote her to the highest office in American government, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to deliver remarks to a massive crowd on the Ellipse in Washington, DC late Tuesday.
The location for the Tuesday evening rally will make the White House the backdrop behind Harris as she lays out what is intended to be an optimistic and hopeful speech. The speech will call on Americans to “turn the page” on nearly a decade of rancorous and divisive zero-sum politics that began when Trump announced his first campaign for the presidency in June 2015.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign chair, told reporters on a call early Tuesday that this evening would be “a major moment” for Harris’s “closing argument to the American people,” and said the vice president’s remarks would be “an optimistic and hopeful message” that is “really grounded in her belief in America” and targeted towards voters who still haven’t decided who to cast their ballot for this year.
“We know a lot of these undecided voters. They're exhausted. They're certainly frustrated by the state of the partisanship and divided political system that really was defined under Donald Trump, his chaos, his lack of focus on real solutions about the things that the American people are concerned about, and that's why we know tonight is really important,” she said.
O’Malley Dillon also said Harris “believes it’s so important to use this moment and the stage that she’s going to be delivering this speech on to turn the page from Trump” and stressed that the vice president would “focus on talking about what her new generation of leadership really means, and centering that around the American people what they care about and that that she’s going to make clear that she’s committed to ensuring that their needs and priorities are her top priority.”
“We are going to hear from her in detail, who she is, what our values are, what our plans are for the American people. She’s obviously going to touch on lowering costs on things like groceries, housing, healthcare. You’re going to hear her really speak to middle class families and what they’re worried about, and what she’s going to do about it, and she is going to very much focus this speech on them, on the American people, unlike what we hear from Donald Trump, which is his focus on himself,” she said.
The Independent understands that Harris will continue to use a theme she began deploying earlier this month when she started talking about the “to-do list” she will bring to the Oval Office and contrasting it with the “enemies list” Trump has been building as he runs a campaign focused on retribution.
According to a senior Harris campaign official who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive planning around the speech, which was still being written as of Monday evening, the vice president will describe Trump as a person who is unfit to be president because he is far more concerned with his own laundry list of grievances and his quest for revenge against Democrats than the needs of the people he is supposed to serve.
The official also described Harris’s vision as one that is singularly focused on the common-sense solutions she has been putting forth on the campaign trail, and contrasted it with Trump’s tariff-heavy economic plans that the Harris campaign has taken to calling a “national sales tax.”
Campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond told reporters that tonight’s address would be “a major moment for the vice president as she frames her final pitch to voters across the country.”
Richmond said Harris would be approaching the remarks in the same way she approached speaking to juries during her time as a prosecutor.
“She’s given an open argument to the voters. Spent the last three months laying out evidence, the facts, and she’ll make her closing argument directly to American people, or the jury that’s who’s going to decide the outcome of this election, and that’s how it should be,” he said.
Richmond also told reporters that Harris would remind voters that she “has always been a voice for the people she has always talked about that her entire career” and contrast herself with Trump, who has spent his career “stamping his own name on stuff.”
“She’ll use the powerful symbolism of the location to remind Americans that Trump is someone so all consumed by his grievances and his power and his desire for revenge, he is not focused on the needs of the American people,” he said.
“Vice President Harris knows that not one thing will be accomplished in this country pitting us against each other. Americans are exhausted by the chaos, the division and the hatred and tonight, she’ll call on the nation to finally turn the page on the Trump era, to unite, find common goals, to find common solutions and pledge to be a president for all Americans.”
Harris’s planned address to the nation comes as she has taken the lead on numerous key issues, according to recent polling data.
An ABC News poll released on Sunday shows her with a six-point advantage when voters were asked whether she or Trump cares more about middle class Americans. An Associated Press poll released last week revealed that Harris is now trusted more than Trump on the issues of jobs and unemployment by a two-point margin, as well as a five-point margin on the issue of housing costs.
A New York Times poll released last month also showed Harris with an eight-point advantage when voters were asked whether she or Trump cares about people like them.
The historic location for the rally was not chosen for its value in terms of electoral college votes. Washington, DC has never been a battleground and only has three electoral votes, which have always gone to Democrats.
But Harris campaign officials chose the location of the Ellipse because the White House backdrop will symbolize what a president can do for good when it comes to getting things done for Americans and uniting the country.
O’Malley Dillon, who managed President Joe Biden’s victorious 2020 campaign against Trump, said the Ellipse is significant for two reasons.
Not only does the White House visual “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” but the location will be 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.”
The location Harris will speak from is the exact spot from which Trump delivered the infamous speech on January 6th, 2021 when he incited a mob of angry supporters to storm the US Capitol in hopes of stopping Congress from Joe Biden’s 2020 win.
“It’s a place that certainly we believe helps crystallize the choice in this election between a candidate seeking unchecked power in Donald Trump and another that’s really offering real solutions to chart a new way forward,” O’Malley Dillon said.
Harris and her aides hope the visual of Harris, talking about her positive vision for the country and common-sense plans in the same place where Trump urged on a riotous mob, will remind voters of why they are exhausted and frustrated by the state of politics in the age of Trump. They also hope it will help Harris harness the enthusiasm of voters who want to move forward and enter a new era of politics that is unburdened by the rancor of the Trump years.
Trump has been focused on delivering his own attempt at a closing argument, but thus far it hasn’t gone well.
A campaign rally he held at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday devolved into a hate-filled orgy of racism, with one early speaker jokingly calling the US territory of Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and making other crass remarks about Latino voters. The backlash was swift and damaging enough that the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the comedian’s words.
