TThe iconic columns of the White House gleamed behind her. In front of her, thousands of supporters brandished “USA” signs and wore bracelets that lit up red and blue on the Ellipse’s acres of grass. One week before election day, Vice President Kamala Harris decided to deliver his closing argument in prime time to Americans, not at one of seven hotly contested debates. Battlefield States but from the same place in Washington, DC, where Donald Trump had rallied his supporters January 6, 2021to try to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat.

The place was the point. Harris wanted voters to remember Trump’s recalcitrance that day — when he failed to act to protect Vice President Mike Pence from rioters chanting for his hanging or to listen to calls from fellow Republicans to deport supporters who attacked law enforcement at the Capitol — and that he did just that in the years that followed, when he continued to deny the election results and promised to pardon the Capitol rioters. January 6 found guilty of assault.

In a powerful 30-minute speech, Harris asked voters to elect her and “turn the page” on Trump.

“We know what Donald Trump has in mind: more chaos, more division, and policies that help those at the top and hurt everyone else. I propose a different path,” she said.

Harris compared Trump to a “little tyrant” who was “unstable,” “obsessed with revenge” and who wants “unchecked power.” She said he wanted to return to the Oval Office, “not to focus on your problems but on his.” Trump has signaled support for military tribunals for political enemies, promised to purge the federal bureaucracy of workers who disagree with him and said he would use the military against opponents he calls “l ‘enemy within’. Trump would come to the Oval Office with an “enemies list,” Harris said. She will show up with a “to-do list.”

Early voting is underway in almost every state, and polls show the race is deadlocked. Trump’s campaign has spent the previous days trying to contain the fallout from racist jokes and the sexist comments made by speakers at his rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Harris, meanwhile, has worked to avoid defections from the left over her support for arming Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. During the speech, several protesters in different sections of the crowd began shouting “Stop the genocide!” » and were escorted by the police. One person displayed a pink banner reading “Kamala: No guns to Israel” before it was taken down.

Harris also tried to convince Republicans alarmed by Trump’s autocratic comments to vote for her, campaigning with the former Wyoming Republican congresswoman. Liz Cheney and air ads showing Republicans explaining why they are voting for her.

Harris has laid out a series of forward-looking ideas for the country in recent weeks, trying to paint a positive vision of what she could accomplish if voters agree to promote her. During her speech Tuesday night, Harris promised to protect women’s access to abortion and reproductive health care, and she said she would work to lower costs for Americans. She outlined a plan to cut red tape for home builders to ease the housing shortage that is driving up prices. She said she would penalize companies that gouge consumers when it comes to groceries. She proposed expanding Medicare to include home care.

Trump’s campaign has leaned into these proposals, prompting voters to question why she hasn’t done more to implement her policy wish list over the past four years as number two in the White House . Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said voters should blame Harris for inflation, conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and crime caused by recent immigrants. “Kamala’s first day in office was over 1,300 days ago, and she has spent the last four years working hand-in-hand with Joe Biden to destroy our country. But today, she is lying about her results because she has no political solution to propose. offer,” Leavitt said in a statement following Harris’ speech Tuesday night. “As for President Trump, his final argument to the American people is simple: Kamala broke him; he will fix it.

But many Harris supporters at the rally were less focused on what Harris would do if she made it to the Oval Office than on preventing Trump from returning there. Gretchen McMullen, 64, came to Washington from Accokeek, Maryland, to see Harris speak. She wants to be able to talk to her newborn granddaughter about it when she’s older and “show her the side of the story I stand on.” McMullen is retired from the Army and is now a case manager helping seriously injured veterans, and she said Trump’s public comments that he would use the military after the “enemy within” alarmed her . “The idea that my classmates were going to turn around on their own scared me,” she said.

Mitzi Maxwell, 69, decided to fly from Orlando, Florida, to attend Harris’ speech after her 88-year-old mother told her, “I think we need to go.” Maxwell wrote postcards for the Harris campaign and held signs in support of Harris in his hometown of Howey-in-the-Hills. But Maxwell wanted to attend Harris’ speech on the Ellipse to help restore the venue itself. She wanted to be here in person, she said, to “help rid this beautiful place of the negativity and heartache caused by the horrible tragedy of January 6.”