Harris Holds Rally at Ellipse Warning of Trump’s Threat to Democracy

The Washington Post / Yasmeen Abutaleb, Matt Viser

15:15 JST, October 30, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday delivered the closing argument of her campaign against Donald Trump, arguing that as president she would focus on delivering for everyday Americans while he would fixate on exacting revenge, speaking before a large crowd at the same site where Trump rallied his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

A week before the end of the most turbulent and closely fought campaign in recent memory, Harris appeared on the Ellipse, surrounded by Washington’s iconic monuments to democracy, and tore into her Republican rival as un-American, casting him as a “petty tyrant” and calling him “unstable,” “obsessed with revenge,” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power.”

“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is,” Harris said during her 30-minute speech. “But America, I am here tonight to say: That’s not who we are.”

Harris spoke with the White House as a backdrop in an effort to remind voters of the stakes and of the very different ways she and Trump would serve as president. While she stressed the dangers she said Trump poses to democracy, she sought to tie those concerns to people’s day-to-day anxieties – including the economy, health care and immigration – in an acknowledgment that many voters may not be moved by theoretical warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism.

The vice president also reiterated the unity message that has been an increasing theme of her campaign’s final stretch.

“I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make – and to people who disagree with me,” Harris 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 my table.”

She added, “It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms.”

More than two hours before the speech, thousands of people were lined up for more than a mile waiting to enter. Most of downtown Washington was shut down as throngs of supporters came to see Harris at one of her final events, in a city that typically does not get high-profile visits from presidential candidates.

The visuals of the crowd were of American flags and “USA” signs – not the usual Harris-Walz signs more common at the vice president’s campaign rallies. It was an effort to signal that the event was patriotic and not strictly partisan, and to cast Harris supporters as the ones who respect democratic norms – in contrast to Trump, whose supporters gathered on the same spot before attacking the U.S. Capitol.

Harris noted that the campaign has been unusual – she became the Democratic nominee only after President Joe Biden dropped out in July – and she used the moment in part to continue introducing herself to Americans. She talked about her career as a prosecutor, her middle-class upbringing and her mother’s influence.

In the campaign’s final stretch, Harris has zeroed in on the assertion that Trump is a bitterly divisive figure who would seek to govern as an authoritarian. She returned Tuesday to a line that has become a common refrain, saying that Trump as president would spend his time stewing over an “enemies list” while she would focus on a “to-do list” for the American people.

Harris’s speech ranged beyond Trump’s character, also touching such issues as abortion rights, health care and her economic plans. But the decision to hold the rally on the Ellipse reflected a calculation that reminding voters of Trump’s involvement with a dangerous, mutinous crowd four years ago was the strongest argument to sway a tiny sliver of undecided voters in the race’s final week.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump spoke from the Ellipse before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, posing what was arguably the biggest threat to democracy in modern American history. The president, whom voters had denied reelection two months earlier, urged his supporters to “fight” for him and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” as Congress was finalizing the presidential election results.

“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 an election – an election he knew he lost,” Harris told the crowd.

At another point, as she noted that either she or Trump would soon be in the Oval Office, Harris pointed to the White House behind her, prompting chants of “Kamala! Kamala!” Biden was inside the White House at the time, and the energized crowd was audible from the White House complex.

Polls show that the race between Harris and Trump has remained deadlocked for several weeks, including in the seven battleground states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. Harris’s advisers have said they are optimistic they will win but expect a “margin of error” race, while Trump and his allies have projected unwavering confidence despite the close contest reflected in the polls.

Democrats have often been frustrated that many voters seem willing to look past Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and his rhetoric since – including his recent assertion that the “enemy from within” poses a bigger threat than North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and his suggestion that he would use the military to go after domestic adversaries. In recent weeks, Trump has tried to reframe what happened during the Capitol assault, earlier this month calling it a “day of love.”

“There were no guns down there; we didn’t have guns,” Trump said. “The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.”

In truth, six men were arrested that day for having guns in the vicinity of the U.S. Capitol, and a seventh who arrived after the riot ended was arrested the following day. Similarly, while Trump said in a recent appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago that no one died as a result of the attack, except Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, in fact four other people died as a consequence of the siege.

While Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 continues to be a major motivator for some voters, fewer Republicans have blamed him for the violence that day as time has passed. A majority of Americans said Trump bore responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, according to a December 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland national poll. But the number of Republicans who said he was to blame immediately after the attack had dropped by about half. Republicans were also less likely to believe that those who stormed the Capitol were “mostly violent.”

Harris has tried to find symbolic venues in recent days as a way of breaking through the noise of the campaign after months when both candidates have focused relentlessly on the seven battleground states. Harris on Friday held a rally in Texas – a state Democrats do not expect to win – to focus on abortion rights in a state that her campaign called “ground zero of the nation’s extreme abortion bans.”

Still, following Tuesday’s speech, she planned to crisscross the nation to take her closing argument to each of the battleground states. Harris planned to visit Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Wednesday, followed by Arizona and Nevada on Thursday, Wisconsin on Friday, and Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday.

The campaign had expected a large crowd that could surpass any of its prior events, with police projecting upward of 52,000 people. One line snaked half a mile down 17th Street to the Tidal Basin, then curved for at least three blocks down Independence Avenue – past rows of Park Police vehicles, around fences separating the crowd from parts of the grassy lawns, and through dozens of D.C. police officers watching over the swelling crowd.

The event began with brief speeches from “ordinary Americans” who underscored the main themes of Harris’s campaign. They included a couple who said they suffered under Texas’s abortion ban when they discovered that a pregnancy was no longer viable at 18 weeks, but doctors had to wait until the mother’s life was in danger; Craig Sicknick, brother of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died after responding to the Jan. 6 attack; and a Republican couple from Pennsylvania who previously favored Trump but said they were now enthusiastically supporting Harris.

The campaign also played a video that included conservatives who said they planned to vote for Harris, including former congresswoman Liz Cheney.

Biden, in his own separate comments Tuesday, appeared to work against the unity theme, referring to Trump’s supporters as “garbage” while responding to a Trump rally speaker’s recent insult of Puerto Rico.

“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” Biden said on a Zoom call to rally Latino voters. “They’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

Asked for comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates suggested that Biden was referring to the language at the rally, not to Trump’s backers. “The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as garbage,” Bates said in a statement.

At the Ellipse on Tuesday night, the entire area was packed and overflowing. Outside the rally site, thousands of people sat by the national monuments, stretching up to the Lincoln Memorial.

Erin Mirante, 29, walked down Independence Avenue before the event, ready to wait for however long it took to see the vice president. It was her first-ever political rally, she said.

“I’m nervous about the election,” Mirante added. “But seeing turnout like this gives me hope.”

On 17th Street, with hours still until the vice president was expected to appear, LeAndre DeReese, a longtime D.C. street vendor, had run out of “Harris-Walz” camouflage hats. He said he sold more than two dozen in less than 15 minutes.

The last time he sold out of merchandise that quickly, DeReese said, was in 1996, when he sold New York caps after the Yankees beat the Atlanta Braves in the World Series.

Ahead of the speech, Harris advisers cast the rally as an effort to reach average voters who have not yet cast a ballot and are exhausted and frustrated by the partisanship and division that have engulfed much of the country in recent years.

“Tonight is going to be a major moment for the vice president as she frames her final pitch to voters,” said campaign co-chairman Cedric L. Richmond. “Americans are exhausted by the chaos and the division and the hatred. Tonight she’ll call on the nation to finally turn the page on the Trump era.”

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon addressed some of the early-voting numbers from various states, which in some cases have shown a relatively high turnout for Republicans. She said the Republicans voting early are reliable GOP voters who typically cast ballots on Election Day and are now simply choosing to do so earlier.

“This race is extremely close – we talk about it as a margin-of-error race. We know it’s going to be closed out in this final week,” O’Malley Dillon said. “We feel very good about where we are. We feel like this period of time is critical this final week. Tonight is a big part of that.”

Toward the end of her speech Tuesday, Harris highlighted Americans who had fought for liberty and civil rights. “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,” Harris said. “The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”