Kamala Harris drew a sharp contrast with Donald Trump as she made her closing argument with the backdrop of the White House, telling a massive crowd at the Ellipse that the election is a choice between a hopeful future and chaos and division.
“These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators,” Harris said. “The United States of America is the greatest idea of humanity ever devised, a nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us, and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.”
Towards the end of the just over 30 minutes speech, it was a tale of conflicting lower thirds, reflective of the divisions in the nation in this tight election. “Harris Delivers Closing Argument Of 2024 Election,” said CNN, while Fox proclaimed “Kamala Closes With Fear & Fascism.” MSNBC said “Kamala Harris Makes Final Pitch To Voters.”
The speech itself repeated many of the themes and policy proposals that Harris has made on the campaign trail, but the address was heavily promoted, commanding the attention of major cable news networks and finishing up just as the fourth game of the World Series was about to begin.
Harris acknowledged that “many of you are still getting to know who I am,” as she interspersed her speech with personal anecdotes of her mother while making the case that her presidency would be different from that of Joe Biden “because the challenges that we face will be different.”
She appeared to hear the warnings of pundits who said that she needed to focus more on her and her policy proposals — not merely Trump — in the waning days of the election.
That said, the staging of the speech was heavy in symbolism, as she noted at the outset that the Ellipse was where Trump held a rally on January 6, 2021 before sending “an armed mob to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election.”
The event was carried by Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, while the BBC covered a portion of it, before doing a split screen of Trump’s rally. The broadcast networks stayed with regular programming, save for their streaming channels.
