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As Kamala Harris headed into a major speech to make the final argument of her historic campaign, one place seemed as obvious as it was powerful: the failed party’s launching pad. insurrection January 6, 2021—This is perhaps the clearest illustration of the real threats posed by the removal of former President Donald Trump to the White House.

So on Tuesday night, just a week before voters deliver their verdict on a presidential campaign as omnipresent as it is exhausting, Harris will take the stage on the 52-acre lawn between the White House and the Washington Monument, also known under the name Washington Monument. Ellipse. While she’s not expected to speak solely about democracy or the threat Trump poses to her, this message will be impossible to miss as Harris addresses thousands in person and many more. others across the country from the same place where Trump exhorted his legions to push Congress to ignore his electoral failure and keep him in power. It was a horrific and unprecedented moment in American history that finished with nine dead, around 150 law enforcement personnel injured and hundreds more traumatized.

And it’s not hard to imagine how Trump might respond to such blatant provocation. The visual of Harris speaking from the hallowed ground where presidents have lit the nation’s Christmas trees and menorahs should quietly remind voters that Trump’s speech speech was not the normal highlight of a term in the White House, and that the selfish thinking behind it could become the norm if he were allowed to return to power. This moment will undoubtedly prompt Trump, or at least many of his surrogates, to once again defend his own actions on January 6 and those of his supporters, more than 1,500 of whom have been charged in connection with that day, including for crime. prosecutions against 571 people, according to at the Ministry of Justice. That’s exactly the message Democrats want Trump to emphasize in the week leading up to Election Day.

And putting aside January 6, the setting of the speech, with the White House itself serving as a backdrop, could also prompt voters to imagine what a president from a younger generation might unleash if he had the opportunity. The core of this That argument finds a receptive audience, particularly in states where voters may not like Harris but are sympathetic to the suggestion that the United States needs to emerge from the chaos of the Trump years.

The outline of the event is based on the account of a senior Harris campaign official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive planning for a speech that is not yet completely closed to edits.

It has become clear for weeks that Harris was increasingly refining her message around the choice voters faced between her campaign vision and that of Trump, whose bid to return to power is fueled as much by the grievances of January 6 only by his desire to avoid all guilt. and other criminal investigations, all or most of which are likely to fail if he regains presidential powers. On its own, the choice between one or the other makes a compelling argument for voters who expect presidents to follow the rules they are charged with upholding. This is why the Harris campaign is returning to the idea that the race is actually between a prosecutor in Harris and a criminal in Trump.

And yet, this reality remains: approximately 3 out of 4 Republicans said Pollsters said on the third anniversary in January that it was time to move on, including 4 in 5 Trump supporters. In some corners of the GOP, those incarcerated or imprisoned for actions related to January 6 – including those who attacked law enforcement with weapons – are martyrs to a faked political system. In fact, Trump has raised money for their legal defense funds and at rallies plays a low-fi role registration of prisoners singing the national anthem as a protest against their detention. Normally, such an anarchic attitude would be disqualifying for the Republican Party, which prides itself on hard lines on public order, but this is not the Republican Party of old.

As voters see Harris make an intentional return to what some see as the crime scene, it could underscore the criminal scrutiny Trump will still face if he fails to seize the shield of a second term as president .. After Trump spent more than a year portraying the entire case against him as politically motivated, it’s Harris’ turn to explicitly argue that American voters could be the real jury in sentencing Trump. Trump.

It will certainly be an effective dual message at the end of a campaign that showed Harris‘ talent for exploiting symbolic settings to convey larger points. (I’m thinking of Friday’s dystopian warning on abortion in Texas, where a strict ban on abortion is in effect.) But it’s unclear how Trump apologists might react to the move, especially given how Trump convinced him, SO many people believe that he is actually a victim of a corrupt justice system.

Yet in many ways, Trump’s own orbit has spent recent weeks falling for the traps set by Harris and her allies. This was especially evident during their only debate, when Harris jumped from blow to blow to embarrass her rival. Yet at Trump’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the Trump campaign allowed itself to be tricked into inviting speakers who leaning in obscene and racist comments. So far, the former president is unwilling to do the bare minimum to demonstrate that he rejects these hateful comments.

As Trump has shown time and time again since he launched the first of his three presidential nominations since 2015, it’s rarely good to think he can put his ego aside for the sake of a bigger prize. It’s why he didn’t call the crowd back in 2021, why he didn’t attend Joe Biden’s inauguration days later in violation of basic decorum, and continues to work overtime to undermine confidence in democracy itself. It stands to reason at this point that Harris’ choice to set the framework for perhaps the biggest speech of her campaign is sure to anger Trump. Harris advisers say this tactic will be repeated daily in swing states over the past week, aiming to bring out Trump’s worst impulses. If history serves any purpose, he won’t be able to resist.

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