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Vice President Kamala
Harris speaks during a campaign rally on the Ellipse on October 29, 2024 in
Washington
Kamala Harris on Tuesday night warned
Americans that Donald Trump would open up a floodgate of vengeance against his
political rivals, including ordinary Americans, while promising that she’d work
for the American people.
“In
less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office,” Harris
said from the Ellipse in Washington, DC, pivoting to the visage of the White
House behind her as she delivered what he campaign had billed as a “closing
argument” speech.
“On
day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list.
When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I
will get done for the American people.”
Standing
where Trump told his supporters on January 6, 2021, to “fight like hell,”
shortly before they ransacked the US Capitol, Harris described the election as
an existential choice between the liberties she promised to protect and the
“chaos and division” that she said would follow Trump back into the White
House.
“Donald
Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who
simply disagree with him. People he calls ‘the enemy from within.’ This is
not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life
better,” Harris said. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge,
consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”
Speaking
for about a half-hour from the Ellipse, Harris measured her policy plans
against Trump’s, casting herself as the former president’s foil – a president
who would expand Medicare to cover home health care, where Trump would try to
cut the program; a president who would back women’s reproductive rights, where
Trump would further restrict them; a president who would prize compromise,
where Trump feasts on conflict.
“Our
democracy doesn’t require us to agree on everything. That’s not the American
way,” Harris said. “We like a good debate. And the fact that someone disagrees
with us, does not make them ‘the enemy from within.’ They are family,
neighbors, classmates, coworkers.”
“It
can be easy to forget a simple truth,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be
this way.”
One
hundred days after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for
reelection, Harris in her remarks continued to keep him at arm’s length.
Serving as Biden’s vice president, Harris said, has been an “honor.” But it
would not define her administration or her objectives in office.
“My
presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different,”
Harris said. “Our top priority as a nation four years ago was to end the
pandemic and rescue the economy. Now our biggest challenge is to lower costs,
costs that were rising even before the pandemic, and that are still too high.”
Shortly
after she concluded her remarks, Biden was forced to
clean up comments he made earlier that evening on a
get-out-the-vote call that sparked immediate backlash from many who interpreted
them as referring to Trump supporters as “garbage.”
Harris
tried on Tuesday to connect her personal story to how she’d lead the country
– a reflection of the fact that many Americans still say they want to know
more about the vice president, who’s running a campaign on an incredibly
compressed timeframe, and her plans.
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