Kamala Harris wishes to draw a stark contrast with former President Trump Tuesday in a speech billed as a closing message for her campaign on the same spot where Trump urged his followers to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Just a week before Election Day, Harris planned to take to the White House Ellipse to make a final pitch to voters that she will improve life for everyday Americans while arguing that Trump is only focused on himself.
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid,” Harris said, according to excerpts prepared in advance. “But America, I’m here tonight to say: That is not who we are.”
“Donald Trump has in mind more chaos and division, ” she said. “He is not going to try to make your life better.”
Apart from the attacks on Trump, Harris portrayed herself as a can-do leader who would reach across the aisle to work with Republicans and solve national problems.
“I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress,” she plans to say.
The location itself offers a dramatic jab at Trump, who used his speech there on Jan. 6 to whip up a crowd of his extremist supporters to try and overturn his 2020 loss to President Biden.
“It’s a place that certainly we believe helps crystalize the choice in this election,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters Tuesday in a preview of the speech. “(It’s) a stark visualization of probably the most infamous example of Donald Trump and how he’s used his power for bad.”
But Harris campaign aides insist the speech won’t be a Biden-style call for American voters to save democracy by voting against Trump.
They say the Democratic nominee will make a broader pitch for voters to hand her a mandate to “turn the page” on Trump’s 12 tumultuous years in the political spotlight.
“To people who disagree with me. Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” Harris said. “I’ll give them a seat at my table. And I pledge to be a president for all Americans. To always put country above party and above self.”
Her campaign hopes to draw a massive crowd of 50,000 or more to Washington for the event. It will surely draw comparisons to the angry Jan. 6 rally that Trump now praises as a “love fest” and one of the biggest crowds he’s ever seen.
Harris is expected lay out a pragmatic and forward-looking plan for the country, including reminding voters about her economic proposals and pledging to work for abortion rights, a popular issue driving Democrats to the polls.
Harris also hopes she can exploit the still-spreading outrage over the racist jokes about Puerto Ricans and others at Trump’s at Madison Square Garden, which included a comedian who derided Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country,” Harris said.
Trump planned to deliver a speech of his own Tuesday evening in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the swingy Lehigh Valley that could help determine the winner of the most hotly contested battleground state.
Even though the city has a large Puerto Rican community, Trump has refused to apologize for the ugly rhetoric at his MSG rally.
The speeches come as polls say Trump and Harris remain locked in a dead-heat race.
Harris leads most surveys of the national popular vote but it’s a photo finish in the seven battleground states that will likely determine the winner of the White House.