Harris to deliver ‘closing’ speech in which she will say Trump is unfit to serve, campaign official says
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.
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.”
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.
The location also provides a stark contrast between Harris and Trump because it 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.
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.
