(AP) — In the shadow of the White House, seven days before the final votes of the 2024 election are cast, Kamala Harris vowed to put country over party and warned that Donald Trump is obsessed with revenge and his own personal interests.
Appearing before an overflowing crowd near the White House one week ahead of election day, Kamala Harris issued her closing argument to voters, urging them to reject Donald Trump’s efforts to sow division and fear, declaring, “That is not who we are.”
Less than 48 hours earlier inside Madison Square Garden, Trump called his Democratic opponent “a trainwreck who has destroyed everything in her path.” His allies on stage labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and said Harris, who would be the first woman to be president, had begun her career as a prostitute.
Donald Trump took the stage Sunday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden to deliver his campaign’s closing argument with the election nine days away after several of his allies used crude and racist insults toward Vice President Kamala Harris and other critics of the former president.
Two nights and 200 miles apart, the dueling closing arguments outlined in stark terms the choice U.S. voters face on Nov. 5 when they will weigh two very different visions of leadership and America’s future.
Trump’s raucous rally, marked by crude and racist insults, highlighted the uglier elements of his coalition. But other parts of it underscored the former businessman’s appeal as someone who vows to fix the economy and the border, and as a political outsider eager to defy any and all conventions despite the risks.
Harris, the vice president for the last four years, chose a more formal setting — the grassy Ellipse near the White House — to underscore the seriousness of this moment in American history and the threat Trump poses to democracy. She faced a massive audience in the same place where Trump addressed thousands of his loyalists on Jan. 6, 2021, before they stormed the U.S. Capitol in one of the darkest days of modern history.
But more than simply reminding voters of the danger that Trump poses to U.S. democracy, Harris’ remarks were designed to highlight her opponent’s record of prioritizing his personal interests instead of the nation’s.
“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,” Harris said. “I pledge to be a president for all Americans — to always put country above party and above self.”
Senior adviser Jen O’Malley Dillon noted that Harris’ closing argument is designed to reach the narrow slice of undecided voters; many moderate Republicans are among them.
“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support — or whether to vote at all,” O’Malley Dillon said. “And this race is extremely close. We talk about it as a margin-of-error race. We know it is going to be closed out in this final week.”
Trump’s team is more focused on energizing his partisan base and reaching infrequent voters across the political spectrum who are frustrated by the direction of the country and looking for change.
Still, Trump framed his comments in recent days with a simple question that cuts across political lines, asking voters whether they are better off now than they were four years ago at the end of his first term. While the nation was still in the throes of the pandemic when Trump left office, polls indicate that most voters are unhappy with the direction of the country today.
Trump has vowed to stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history and impose broad tariffs to generate revenue and boost American manufacturing.
Ever defiant facing criticism from even some Republicans, Trump on Tuesday called his Madison Square Garden event “a lovefest” and did not address the comments of pro-Trump comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Hinchcliffe also made demeaning jokes about Black people, other Latinos, Palestinians, and Jews in his routine before Trump took the stage.
“Nobody’s ever had a love like that,” Trump said of the hours-long Sunday event that featured his family members and high-level surrogates and supporters including billionaire Elon Musk, TV psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “It was really love for our country.”
The Republican former president on Tuesday also offered a dark assessment of Harris’ leadership. He said that she “obliterated” the nation’s borders, “decimated the middle class,” brought “bloodshed and squalor” to major cities, and “unleashed war and chaos all over the world.”
.webp)
.webp)
“No person who has caused so much destruction and death at home and abroad should ever be allowed to be the president of the United States,” Trump told dozens of supporters who gathered at his Florida estate.
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said Trump has made clear his plans to fix the economy, secure the southern border, and “improve people’s daily lives.”
“Kamala Harris hasn’t done any of that,” he said. “It’s a message of despair, personal attacks, and nothing from Harris or her campaign about what they’re actually going to do to help Americans. So it’s a massive contrast.”
Harris has largely moved on from the “joyful” campaigning style that defined her entrance into the presidential contest this summer. She pledged unity on Tuesday night, but she also cast Trump as someone driven more by revenge and grievance than a commitment to the people.
“This is someone unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power,” Harris said. “This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better.”
She spoke directly to Republican voters at times and promised to listen to those who didn’t vote for her if elected. Harris previously said she would include a Republican in her Cabinet.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said. “He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”
Heading into the speech, the Democrat’s campaign was aware of criticism from her party’s far-left base that she has been too focused on courting moderate Republican voters. They urged Harris to focus more on working-class priorities than the threat Trump poses to U.S. democracy.
Ultimately, the vice president’s speech was designed to tie both issues together. She warned of Trump threatening democratic norms and vowed to take action against high grocery prices and help first-time home buyers with making a down payment.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a top Harris ally, said voters can “walk and chew gum at the same time — meaning they can hear an argument about freedom and about something that affects their pocketbook. And I think she is certainly capable to prosecute both cases at the same time.”
Sisters Michelle Detwiler and Renee Newell drove from Virginia to attend Harris’ remarks at the Ellipse.
“We both have daughters and we’re both here for them,” Newell said. Detwiler said the location of the event is a “great counterpoint to the imagery of Jan. 6. D.C. is a great city for peaceful public gatherings.
“We’re so glad to be here and to experience the joy,” she said.
Kamala Harris on Tuesday sought to remind Americans what life was like under Donald Trump and then offered voters a different path forward if they sent her to the White House, in a speech billed as her campaign’s closing argument.
“I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me,” she said, speaking before a massive crowd that spilled from the grassy Ellipse near the White House to the Washington Monument.
Some key moments from her half-hour speech:
The location of the speech reinforced her message
Harris chose to speak from the Ellipse on purpose. It’s the same spot in Washington where Republican Donald Trump helped incite a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But the vice president didn’t devote much of her speech to the violence of that day, instead using the field between Constitution Avenue and the White House more as a backdrop — a quiet reminder of the different choices Americans face.
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” she said, adding that he wants back into the White House “not to focus on your problems, but to focus on his.”
Kamala Harris, the prosecutor, argued her case
Harris spent years working as a prosecutor. She was California’s attorney general before she became a U.S. senator. And she often says on the campaign trail that she’s only ever had one client — the people. In her speech, she talked about her past work taking on scammers, violent offenders who abused women and children, and cartels that trafficked in guns and human beings.
She said she’d bring with her to the White House an instinct to protect.
“There’s something about people being treated unfairly, or overlooked, that just gets to me,” she said.
It’s me, Hi. I’m the presidential nominee. It’s me.
One week before the election, Harris allowed that “I know many of you are still getting to know who I am.”
The Democratic nominee has been running for only three months in a compressed campaign launched after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Harris still is confronting voters who say they want to learn more about her and how she will govern. So she spent some time Tuesday talking about her career, her goals, and her background.
“I’ll be honest with you: I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. But here’s what I promise you: I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me.”
To-do list for Day One at the White House
Harris devoted a good chunk of her speech to talking about policies she’d enact if she were to win the White House, including helping first-time homeowners with down payments and aiding the so-called “sandwich generation” of adults who are caring for young children and older parents by allowing elder care to be funded by Medicare. She said she’d work to pass a bipartisan border security bill that tanked last year after Trump encouraged congressional Republicans to let it die.
And she said she would work to bring back abortion protections. “I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justice took away from the women of America,” Harris said. The Supreme Court, with three Trump-appointed justices, overturned federal protections of abortion in 2022. Abortion has since become one of the most motivating issues for the Democratic base in the 2024 election.
“On Day One, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” she said. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”
Size matters on the campaign trail — especially to Trump
The Ellipse is a grassy expanse between the White House and the Washington Monument that has long played host to political events and national traditions like the annual holiday tree lighting. On Tuesday, the space was packed. Crowds spilled onto the National Mall back toward the Washington Monument, where giant screens and speakers were set up for people to hear and see from afar.
The cheers of the boisterous crowd could be heard from the White House driveway. Harris’ campaign said it was her biggest rally to date. She’s already packed stadiums and other venues with supporters during her rallies. Harris loves to needle Trump about crowd size — a particular preoccupation for the Republican leader, who claimed the campaign had to bus people in Tuesday to fill the space.
Harris has called Trump ‘unhinged’ and ‘unstable.’ Now she’s adding ‘petty tyrant’
Harris boiled down criticism of Trump into two words: “petty tyrant.”
She warned Trump is a man governed by grievances, one who would focus on himself and his “enemies list” when he got into the White House. She harked back to the nation’s founding when Americans fought for freedom, then sped through decades of hard-fought civil rights battles.
“They did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms. They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she said. “These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”
Meanwhile, a Biden complication emerges
Just moments before Harris was to speak, Biden was on a campaign call reacting to a comic who called Puerto Rico garbage during a Trump rally last weekend. The president said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
He’d joined a national call organized by the advocacy group Voto Latino. Biden urged those on the call to “vote to keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” adding, “He’s a true danger to not just Latinos but to all people.”
Biden’s remarks were quickly seized on by Republicans who said he was denigrating Trump supporters, a distraction for Harris when she is trying to reach out to GOP voters.
Biden quickly sent out a social media post seeking to clarify his remarks.
“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable,” Biden said of Trump. “That’s all I meant to say.”
There’s still plenty to come after what Harris called her ‘closing argument’
The event was framed as a campaign finale meant to lay out in stark terms the choice for voters next week. But it’s far from Harris’ last campaign event. She’ll be hitting all the key battleground states as she makes her last pitch to voters.
She will headline events in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and on Thursday she will have rallies in Arizona and Nevada. More events are expected before Election Day.
The campaign is looking to pick up voters across many different demographics in the hope that a swing vote here and there may add up to a win in a razor’s-edge race with Trump.
No scene has dominated U.S. politics since 2015 quite like Donald Trump on stage, waxing on for an hour-plus in front of a chorus of red “Make America Great Again” hats.
The stream-of-consciousness routine, the interrupting one of his thoughts with the next, is not a polemic Cicero or Lincoln would recognize. The former president and Republican nominee calls his style of speech “the weave,” whipsawing from dystopian warnings to light-hearted storytelling to policy pronouncements.
“You make a speech, and my speeches last a long time because of the weave, you know, I mean, I weave stories into it,” Trump explained last week to popular podcaster Joe Rogan. “If you don’t — if you just read a teleprompter, nobody’s going to be very excited. You’ve got to weave it out. So you — but you always have to — as you say, you always have to get right back to work. Otherwise, it’s no good. But the weave is very, very important. Very few weavers around. But it’s a big strain on your — you know, it’s a big — it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work.”
Over the closing weeks of his third presidential campaign, Trump’s presentation has grown as disjointed as ever and notably darker. But the crowds keep coming, cheering his nationalistic populism, laughing at the insults and chanting along, fists raised, with his benedictory pledges to make America strong, proud, healthy, wealthy, and, of course, great again.
Trump’s speeches, while never the same, all employ consistent devices and themes. He wields humor, braggadocio, anecdotes, grievances, and grand promises. There are nonsequiturs, fantastical falsehoods, and withering attacks on opponents. He sprinkles in vulgarities and superlatives. There are even the occasional stints read from the teleprompters he mocks when any other politician uses them — and then claims that he doesn’t use teleprompters or doesn’t need them.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, encourages voters to see him in person, suggesting doing so only affirms that he is erratic and unfit for office. Other critics compare his extended showmanship to authoritarian leaders. Or they argue “the weave” is simply a cover for the cognitive decline of a 78-year-old who would be the oldest newly sworn U.S. president in history.
Here is a study of “the weave,” deployed on one night last week in suburban Atlanta.
Epic entrance and just enough details — even lies — make the case
Perhaps the most important moment is Trump’s entrance. His walkout music, a device that evokes his brief turn as a professional wrestling promoter, is Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The U.S.A.” The former president stands on stage, silent and serious, as the crowd sings along.
At a recent Turning Point USA rally in Duluth, Georgia, pyrotechnics and large video screens flanking him at center stage added to the effect, as his on-screen likeness towered over the crowd. Trump looked out over thousands of cellphones recording the spectacle.
With the last notes of Greenwood’s opening hymn, Trump immediately relaxed and praised his audience as “thousands of proud, hardworking Americans and patriots, which is what you are.”
Then, in a more formal tone, he seemed to shift to the prompters: “I’d like to begin by asking a very simple question. Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
It’s the famous question Republican Ronald Reagan used to defeat Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Trump uses it as a way to tie Harris to President Joe Biden. But as soon as the crowd in Duluth yelled “no,” Trump moved to sweeping promises, hyperbole, and superlatives that doubled as indictments of Biden and Harris.
“I will end inflation. I will stop the invasion of criminals into our country,” he pledged, suggesting all migrants are criminals.
“We’re going to fix our nation fast,” he said. “America will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer, and stronger than ever before. This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of incompetence, failure, and disaster, or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country.”
Biden and Harris aren’t just bad, in Trump’s language. He called them “the worst president” and “the worst vice president” ever. Harris, he warned, would “destroy your family’s finances forever.” He blames Harris alone for “an open border,” taking liberties with immigration and crime statistics and suggesting, falsely, that the vice president singlehandedly controls U.S. immigration policy.
He slipped in that Harris “got no votes” — a reference to her becoming the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out following party primaries. “Therefore,” Trump insisted, “she is a threat to democracy” — a Trumpian staple projecting onto his opponents their most aggressive attacks against him.
By the time he was done in Duluth, he had lampooned Harris as a “low-IQ individual” and “not a smart person.”
Thousands laughed at each broadside.
Transitions and accuracy are never necessary
Trump does not speak in a linear pattern as he builds to a crescendo. From his first Harris takedowns, he moved to expressions of compassion for Hurricane Helene victims and then jarringly to one of his favorite subjects: his public standing.
“Our hearts are with you and we are praying for you — the polls, despite everything. The polls,” he said. “Do you see what’s happening here? Here, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee? And Georgia. The polls. The polls are through the roof.”
Minutes later, during an audible crowd lull, he dropped in his signature “MAGA” slogan to elicit cheers.
“What a nice crowd this is!” he answers with a chuckle. “What a nice crowd.”
He bounced back to the prompter for numbers framing inflation’s effects on U.S. households. He asked, “Should I sue” CBS and “60 Minutes” for, in his words, manipulating Harris interview answers that were “from the loony bin.”
“It’s election interference and fraud,” he said, projecting charges that are part of felony criminal cases against him.
Trump mocked Harris for saying she will raise taxes, but misrepresented her proposals as applying universally. (She targets corporations and the wealthiest individual filers.) Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, meanwhile, were “the largest tax cuts in history,” he said. (A charitable interpretation, at best, that ignores inflation.)
Specifics, though, are not the bottom line
Timothy and Amanda Browning reached different conclusions about Trump’s style after driving from their Georgia mountain town of Lula to attend their first Trump rally.
“I liked it because it shows how authentic he is,” said Timothy Browning. “There are lulls — but you’ve got to stick with him because there’s always a zinger coming.”
Amanda Browning laughed as she recalled leaning over to her husband to whisper that Trump “sure could use a speechwriter.”
Still, the co-owners of an event space and catering business in Lula reaffirmed their loyalties to the former president.
Timothy sported a T-shirt that had a sexist insult of Harris coined by some conservatives after Biden named her his running mate in 2020. Browning said, though, that he does not consider himself, Trump, or the former president’s supporters angry.
Instead, the Brownings keyed on Trump’s first-term economy and his pledges for an encore term. Talking about their business, they recounted specific price increases they’ve seen since pandemic-era inflation. They were not interested in pandemic supply chain interruptions or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiling world oil markets. Trump, they said, presided over a better situation for them than Biden and, by extension, Harris.
Timothy Browning summed up his takeaway in Trumpian terms.
“I hear him,” Browning said, “putting America first.”