Kamala Harris provided a sharp contrast to Donald Trump as she delivered her closing argument against the backdrop of the White House, telling a huge crowd at the Ellipse that the election is a choice between a hopeful future and chaos and division.

“These United States of America are not vessels for the schemes of wannabe dictators,” Harris said. “The United States of America is the greatest idea of ​​humanity ever conceived, a nation large enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any rift or rift between us, and fearless enough to create a to imagine a future full of possibilities.”

By the end of the just over 30-minute speech, it was a tale of conflicting lower thirds, a reflection of the nation’s divisions in this close election. “Harris Delivers Closing Argument for the 2024 Elections,” CNN said, while Fox shouted: “Kamala closes with fear and fascism.” MSNBC said: “Kamala Harris makes final pitch to voters.”

The speech itself reiterated many of the themes and policy proposals Harris had made during the campaign, but the speech was heavily promoted, attracted the attention of major cable news networks, and ended just as the fourth game of the World Series was about to to start. start.

Harris acknowledged that “many of you are still getting to know who I am,” interspersing her speech with personal anecdotes from her mother as she argued that her presidency would be different from Joe Biden’s “because the challenges we face will be different.”

She appeared to hear the warnings from experts who said she should focus more on her and her policy proposals in the final days of the election — and not just on Trump.

That said, the staging of the speech was rich in symbolism, as she noted at the outset that the Ellipse was where Trump held a rally on January 6, 2021 before he “sent an armed mob to impose the will of the people on a free and free way to overthrow’. fair elections.” As she spoke about that day, police sirens could be heard in the background — something not unusual in the White House area.

The event was broadcast by Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, with the BBC reporting some of it before doing a split screen of Trump’s rally in Allentown, PA. The broadcast networks stuck with their regular programming, aside from their streaming channels. According to Harris’ campaign, 75,000 people had gathered — with an overflow, outside the security perimeter, near the Washington Monument. These figures have not been confirmed by the police.

During her speech, Harris tried to reach out to Republicans, which could be crucial in what has been called a “margin of error” race. She seized on Trump’s own rhetoric, including his use of the term “enemy within” to talk about political rivals, while portraying her presidency as one that would unify.

“Just because someone disagrees with us doesn’t make him or her an enemy within,” Harris said. “They are fellow Americans, and as Americans we rise together and fall together.”

She also reiterated a theme during her campaign that Trump sought a return to the Oval Office for his own interests, and not for the voters. She said Trump would walk into the Oval Office on day one “with a list of enemies. If elected, I will walk in with a to-do list of priorities of what I can get done for the American people.”

“I promise to look for common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better. It is not my intention to score political points. I want to make progress,” Harris said. “…And for people who disagree with me – unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I will give them a seat at the table.”

Trump’s team has tried to characterize Harris’ rhetoric as divisive, claiming she has called the former president’s own supporters Nazis. That appeared to be a reference to Harris’s quotation of comments from Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who told The New York Times last week that the former president met the definition of a fascist.

“Kamala Harris lies, curses and clings to the past to avoid admitting the truth – the migrant crime crisis, skyrocketing inflation and raging world wars are the result of her terrible policies,” said Trump’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt. said in a statement.