In campaign’s final stretch, Trump rages at ‘the enemy from within’ while Harris invokes shared values

WASHINGTON – Speaking in the same spot where her opponent urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol nearly four years earlier, the messages – both symbolic and literal – that Vice President Kamala Harris delivered in her closing argument to the nation could hardly have been clearer.

In a speech in the 52-acre park south of the White House known as the Ellipse on Tuesday, the Democratic nominee for president called on voters to reject the idea former President Donald Trump has repeated frequently in the campaign’s final stretch that his political opponents are “the enemy from within.”

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

Meanwhile, Trump has spent the past week answering for a daylong event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27 that his campaign had billed as the Republican nominee’s closing argument. Even before Trump took the stage to double down on his claim that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, speakers chosen by his campaign likened Harris to a prostitute, mocked her ethnicity and called her “the Antichrist”; joked about Jews being cheap and Latinos having too many children; and called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

While his campaign staff has tried to distance Trump from his opening acts, on Tuesday the former president said the event in his hometown was “an absolute lovefest, and it was my honor to be involved.”

In his speech in New York City, Trump painted a dark picture of the United States, promising to “rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered” by immigrants, whom he described as “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals.” Trump punctuated his case against Harris with the catchphrase he made famous as a reality TV star.

“You’ve destroyed our country,” he said. “We’re not going to take it anymore. Kamala, you’re fired. Get out.”

Cornell Clayton, a professor of political science at Washington State University, said Trump’s rhetoric is “unlike anything we’ve seen in the modern period,” when presidential campaigns have typically sought to invoke the unifying themes and values shared by Americans across the political spectrum.

“I think we’ve reached a new low in terms of modern presidential campaigns, or modern campaigns in general, with the Trump campaign and its rhetoric,” Clayton said. “More important in the rhetoric, though, is the content of it and the direction of it.”

Clayton said the Trump campaign is running a base strategy, trying to fire up his most fervent supporters. The Harris campaign, on the other hand, is appealing to moderates, Republicans who dislike Trump and voters who may not go to the polls at all.

As he often does, Trump alternated between reading from a teleprompter and veering off script to assail his political foes. In an extended riff warning that electing Harris would lead to Americans being drafted to fight in “World War III,” he called retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis – the Eastern Washington native who served as his first secretary of defense but later criticized Trump – a “weak, stupid general.”

Through a spokesperson, Mattis declined an interview request from The Spokesman-Review. In June 2020, after Trump ordered the National Guard to clear protesters outside the White House so he could pose for a photo in front of a nearby church, Mattis said in a statement that “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”

In the closing days of a race that polls indicate will likely come down to the wire, Harris has seized on recent statements from other members of the first Trump administration who now say their former boss represents a unique threat to the United States. In an interview with The New York Times published on Oct. 22, retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, said the former president “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist.”

Trump has suggested on multiple occasions that he may use the National Guard and even active-duty troops to quash protests if he is elected again. If Harris wins, he has repeatedly said without evidence, it will only be because Democrats cheat.

Ultimately, the outcome of the race will be decided by Americans in states across the country. Election Day is Tuesday.