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.
And while her speech didn’t deliver more policy specifics, she once again argued that her background – a child of immigrants who became a prosecutor – had prepared her to deliver on her promises.
“For as long as I can remember, I have always had an instinct to protect. There’s something about people being treated unfairly, or overlooked, that just gets to me,” Harris said. “It is what my mother instilled in me. A drive to hold accountable those who use their wealth or power to take advantage of other people.”
