With a week to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing message to a massive rally of 75,000 people gathered at the Ellipse in Washington, DC.

With the White House lit up behind her, Harris urged the excited crowd and Americans watching to embrace a “new generation of leadership” as she called for cross-party unity. “We love a good debate,” she said. “And just because someone disagrees with us doesn’t make them the enemy within. They are family, neighbors, classmates, work colleagues. They are fellow Americans, and as Americans we rise and fall together.”

“America, for too long, we have been consumed by too much division, chaos and mutual distrust,” she said. “And it can be easy then to forget a simple truth: It doesn’t have to be this way. We need to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on drama and conflict, fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leaders in America.”

Harris strongly presented two distinct visions for the nation. “Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood in this very place almost four years ago and sent an armed mob into the capital of the United States to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” she said. “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t think people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I will give them a seat at the table.”

“America was born when we took away freedom from a petty tyrant,” Harris said toward the end of her impassioned speech, a reference to Republican nominee Donald Trump. “Through generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in doing so demonstrated to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure.”

In recent weeks, Harris and her surrogates have tried to insist that Trump remains a threat to democracy and will rule as an authoritarian if allowed to return to power. Her choice of venue on Tuesday was no accident.

IN A interview with CNNHarris campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said the decision to hold the speech in the Ellipse was a deliberate call to Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally at the site where the former president fueled the violent attack on the Capitol.

“It’s really a reminder of the seriousness of the job, how much a president can do for better or for worse, to shape the country and impact people’s lives,” she said. “But it’s also a stark visualization of perhaps the most infamous example of Donald Trump and how he’s used his power for evil, really focusing on himself and spreading division and chaos and inciting the crowd to try to maintain their own power and put themselves on top. country.”

Trump is also trying to make a bold statement at his own campaign closing events. On Sunday, the former president held a hate-filled rally in Madison Square Garden, the iconic entertainment heart of the city that made him.

The rally had speakers who he made racist jokes about Latinos, Puerto Ricans, and Black Americans; a statement by Trump adviser Stephen Miller that “America is for Americans and Americans alone”; and a sardonic description of Harris by Tucker Carlson as “the first low-IQ former California prosecutor from Samoa and Malaysia” who could be elected president. Trump repeated his standard number of attacks against immigrants and doubled down on his promises once again clear the “enemy within” from American civil society.

The rally drew strong public reaction, particularly from prominent celebrities and members of the Puerto Rican community, as well as a fighting the Trump campaign and other Republicans to distance themselves from the former president’s guest comment.

The contrasting views in the two campaigns couldn’t be starker as the candidates try to close out a tumultuous election cycle with a bang.

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