Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking on Washington’s Eclipse Tuesday night to a crowd estimated as high as 76,000 people, said she would be a president who would listen to opponents and lok for ways to build coalitions to brig America together.
“In less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office,” she said,wirh rhe White House beghig her. “On Day 1, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”
in a speech that her supporters are calling “her best and the best of the crticial xampaign against convicted felon, sexual predator and proven fraud Trump, Harris laid out a presidency that she said woould serve “all the people” and not a chosen few.
New York Times reporter call the speech “a fiery broadside against former President Donald J. Trump, calling her rival “consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power, presenting herself as a fighter who would usher in a new generation of leadership.”
In his “Morning Joe ,” show on MSNBC, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough called Harris’ speech “a collisional need in this divisive campaign.”
Reported Katie Rogers and Reid J. Epstein in The Times:
But her speech had to bear more weight than just another attack on Mr. Trump. So on the 101st day of her improbable presidential campaign, Ms. Harris presented herself as a former prosecutor who had long worked for the public good — pausing to remind her audience that she had spent most of her career outside Washington and assuring her listeners that “not all good ideas come from here.”
Relaying her case in a way that was plain-spoken but forceful, Ms. Harris told the crowd that she would not be a perfect president but that she would govern with unity in mind, based on what she said was a “lifelong instinct to protect” people who had been abused or victimized.
But she also used the arc of history to make her case, saying that the country was born “when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant” and that, over centuries, Americans had fought threats both foreign and domestic to preserve the promise of democracy.
“They did not struggle, sacrifice and lay down their lives, only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” Ms. Harris said. “The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised.”
Throughout her speech, Ms. Harris instead tried to keep the focus trained on the comparison between herself and Mr. Trump. As she ticked through her policy plans, she warned that his proposals would continue to harm Americans.
She said that he would again aim to repeal the Affordable Care Act, legislation that is now popular among a majority of Americans but whose provisions Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, suggested on Tuesday he would seek to overhaul.
Ms. Harris said that Mr. Trump would again enact tax cuts for the country’s highest earners. And she reiterated that her administration would crack down on corporate price gouging and help lower costs for Americans through tax credits for home buyers, parents and caregivers.
“There’s something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that, frankly, just gets to me — I don’t like it,” Ms. Harris said, adding, “If you give me the chance to fight on your behalf, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way.”
She said a Harris administration would be a bulwark against a raft of abortion restrictions and highlighted the possibility of a broader rollback of reproductive rights. She pointed to other plans laid out by Project 2025, the policy blueprint for a conservative presidential administration written by many of Mr. Trump’s allies.
“I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America,” Ms. Harris said to the roaring crowd.
The speech by Harris comes on the heels of a devisive rally by Trump that features rampant racism, bigotry and hate that has enrangerd a powerful voting block of Puerto Rico immigrants in swing state Pennsylvania and displayed hate and threats of violence and retaliation.
Trump’s rally showcased his hate and fascist intentions that included his lans to arrest and punish those he considers enemiesl
Harris offered an alternative.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table,”she siad Tuesday night.
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other — that’s who he is, sh e rsaid. “But America, I am here tonight to say, That’s not who we are.”
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