Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver her campaign’s “closing argument” Tuesday from the same spot in Washington where former President Donald Trump helped incite a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
One week out from Election Day, Harris’ address from the grassy Ellipse near the White House is designed to encourage Americans to visualize their alternate futures if she or Trump takes over the Oval Office in less than three months.
Trump opened his remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday morning by saying Harris is running on a “campaign of destruction” and “of absolute hate,” accusing her team of “perhaps even trying to destroy our country.” He will head to Pennsylvania later in the day for a Building America’s Future event in Drexel and a rally Tuesday night in Allentown.
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What is The Ellipse?
The Ellipse, where Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver her closing message against former President Donald Trump, is a grassy park between the White House and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.
The area, which is administered by the National Park Service, has long played host to a range of political events and national traditions. Most recently, it was where then-President Trump delivered a lie-filled speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before hundreds stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify to 2020 election.
While the White House is often the backdrop for events on the Ellipse, expressly political events are allowed in the park, unlike at the White House.
The park was first developed in the 1850s and was part of landscape architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s plans for the nation’s capital. However, its development was cut short by a lack of funds and the Civil War, according to the National Park Service. During the conflict, soldiers were housed on the site, and the area had also been used as horse pens, a slaughterhouse and a trash dump, according to the Park Service.
Harris’ closing argument against Trump is far from her final event
Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver what her campaign is touting as her closing argument against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
But the event, a large gathering on the Ellipse park just south of the White House, will be far from her last rally.
Harris is slated to crisscross the country in the final days of the campaign, hitting all key battleground states as she makes her last pitch to voters.
Harris’ campaign has crafted the Tuesday event as both a physical and rhetorical counter to Trump.
She will urge voters to “turn the page” toward a new era and away from Trump, lambasting both the kind of rhetoric Trump has used and what it would mean to give him four more years as president. Physically, Harris will be standing in the same park where Trump delivered a lie-filled speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before hundreds stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify to 2020 election.
‘We are on track to win a very close election,’ Harris campaign chair says
Harris’ campaign chair says early voting returns in key states suggest the vice president’s supporters are turning out in numbers she needs to win.
In an online video running nearly three and a half minutes, Jen O’Malley Dillon says a lot of Republican-leaning voters were voting early in strong numbers as well — but those tended to be folks who would have otherwise voted on Election Day.
By contrast, she said, the Harris campaign believes low-propensity voters are breaking for the vice president.
O’Malley Dillion said the campaign’s polling shows that late-breaking undecided voters “are more open to supporting” Harris if they find out “more information” about her in the campaign’s closing days.
“It’s OK to be worried,” before Election Day, she said, but added, “We are on track to win a very close election.”
‘This truly is a margin of error race’
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon has released a video telling supporters, “Why you don’t have to feel anxious and you can feel good” about next week’s election.
As the campaign has been arguing for months, O’Malley Dillon says Harris has “multiple pathways” to get to the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House.
She said seven states remain in play — the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.
O’Malley Dillon said that, rather than conceding any of those, as sometimes happens late in races, Harris is still campaigning hard in all of them because “this truly is a margin of error race.”
Hundreds of Miami-Dade County ballots were found on the side of the road
The elections department in Florida’s largest county confirmed Tuesday that a sealed bin and a sealed bag had been found by a driver and the ballots inside had already been scanned and tabulated at an early voting site on Monday, according to reporting by the Miami Herald.
A county employee forgot to lock the back of a truck and the containers fell out when they drove off, according to county elections supervisor Christina White, who said election workers confirmed nothing was damaged or tampered with.
A video posted by the popular South Florida social media account Only in Dade shows a passing driver apparently stopping to pick up the containers labeled with county barcodes and drive them to a police station.
The employee driving the truck has since been fired.
Harris campaign takes over Las Vegas’ Sphere to help get out the vote
The vice president’s team says her campaign is the first to advertise on the entertainment venue, which opened in 2023.
The exterior of the Sphere features a rotating series of messages encouraging people to vote for Harris and running mate Tim Walz by Election Day, Nov. 5. The messages include her slogan, “When we fight, we win,” and other phrases.
Nevada is among the handful of battleground states that the Democrat and Republican rival Donald Trump are trying hard to win.
Harris’ team says the Sphere advertising is a “critical piece” of their efforts in Nevada, which also include taking over the homepages of top newspapers and mobile billboards in Reno, Carson City and Las Vegas.
Harris is scheduled to campaign in Reno and Las Vegas on Thursday.
Trump on his Madison Square Garden rally: ‘There’s never been an event so beautiful’
While he didn’t mention a comedian’s controversial remarks about Puerto Rico, Trump expounded at length about his Madison Square Garden rally, which he called a “lovefest,” a term he has also used to reference the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
At Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Trump noted “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as the Sunday night rally in his hometown of New York City. Trump called it “terrible to say,” as some of his critics have pointed out, that the same arena was host to a gathering of Nazis in 1939.
More than 20,000 people attended a Feb. 20, 1939 rally at the Garden organized by the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group that hung swastikas alongside a huge portrait of George Washington.
Several of the speakers on Sunday referenced that event, including former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, who said, “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here.”
“Nobody’s ever had love like that,” Trump said of the hourslong Sunday event that featured speakers including some of his children, wife Melania and high-level surrogates and supporters including TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “It was really love for our country.”
Trump wraps his remarks without referencing comments of a comedian at his New York rally
Trump has yet to address the controversy, also not mentioning it during his appearances in Georgia on Monday. On Tuesday, he did reference the event overall, calling it “an absolute lovefest” in his hometown.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during the Sunday event at Madison Square Garden. His remark has drawn wide condemnation and highlighted the rising power of a key Latino group in the swing state of Pennsylvania. He also made demeaning jokes about Black people, other Latinos, Palestinians and Jews during his routine before Trump’s appearance.
The Harris campaign has released an ad that will run online in battleground states targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s remarks.
The comments landed Harris a show of support from Puerto Rican music star Bad Bunny and prompted reactions from Republicans in Florida and Puerto Rico.
Head of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party calls Hinchcliffe remarks ‘totally reprehensible’
The president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party, Ángel Cintrón, rejected the comments of a comedian at a Trump rally in New York where he called the U.S. territory “a floating island of garbage.”
Cintrón said the “poor attempt at comedy” by Tony Hinchcliffe on Sunday was “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.”
“There is no room for absurd and racist comments like that. They do not represent the conservative values of republicanism anywhere in our nation,” Cintrón said in a statement.
He noted that there are 3 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico and nearly 6 million in the U.S. mainland.
“Whether we are Republicans or Democrats, we are American and Puerto Rican citizens proud of our roots and incalculable contributions to American democracy for more than one hundred years,” Cintrón said.
Harris will have to ‘get herself a job someplace,’ Trump says
A week away from the end of voting in the general election, Trump is reflecting on his presidential run, saying, “We’ve had a great campaign” and predicting that Harris will have to go home and “get herself a job someplace, who knows.”
Trump is featuring speakers who say they were harmed by policies under Harris’ time in office
Tammy Nobles talked about the death of her daughter, saying the perpetrator was an MS-13 gang member in the country illegally.
Michael Koppy, owner of Go Green Dry Cleaners, talked about how he has had to help other small businesses unable to keep up with inflation and rising costs.
Christy Shamblin, whose daughter-in-law Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee was killed during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, said Donald Trump “demonstrates peace through strength.”
Trump: Anything positive about the economy during Harris’ time in office was ‘fake’
Saying that the economy under Harris’ time in office has caused destruction, Trump said that any boon was “fake.”
He then cited “one of the most respected people on Wall Street” as saying that “the economy is only good” because “people think Trump is going to get elected.”
Trump says he would create ‘compensation fund’ for the ‘victims of migrant crime’
As he has many times along the campaign trail, Trump is decrying federal authorities for dropping plane-loads of migrants “all over the Midwest,” mentioning Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio.
Saying he was announcing the intent “for the first time,” Trump said that as president he would be “seizing the assets of the criminal gangs and drug cartels,” and using those assets “to create a compensation fund to provide restitution for the victims of migrant crime.”
Trump calls immigration reform ‘the single biggest issue’ for his campaign
Immigration reform — and blaming Democrats for issues caused by an influx of immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border — has long been Trump’s signature campaign issue, and a week out from Election Day, he is sticking to that.
Saying that “we talk about inflation and the economy,” Trump added, “To me, there’s nothing more important than the fabric of our country being destroyed,” calling the border “the single biggest issue.”
Trump plays video featuring mother of 12-year-old found dead in Texas
Trump is playing a video featuring comments from the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Texas girl who was found dead in a creek not far from her home.
Police charged two Venezuelan men who had entered the U.S. illegally with the girl’s murder.
Alexis Nungaray said that her daughter is “six feet in the ground based off of” Harris’ decisions and called for Trump’s reelection.
Trump alleges Harris ‘keeps talking about Hitler and Nazis because her record is horrible’
Trump accused Harris of not caring about the impact of her actions in what he called her “campaign of absolute hate,” saying that she intends to “keep this misery going, and she’s going to keep it going for as long as she can.”
Trump alleged that Harris “keeps talking about Hitler and Nazis because her record is horrible.”
Trump said that the “three great people” on stage with him would share their own stories about “how their lives have been shattered” by Harris’ policies.
Trump says he is ‘running on a plan to save America’
The GOP nominee said his Democratic rival, now Harris, is running on a “campaign of destruction” and “of absolute hate,” accusing her team of “perhaps even trying to destroy our country.”
Trump again said Democrats “stole the presidency of the United States” by ousting Biden from their ticket this year.
As he spoke, Trump was flanked on stage by three people, none of whom he has identified thus far.
Trump has arrived at his Mar-a-Lago event
Supporters cheered his name and raised cellphones in the air as he walked into the room, exactly one week before Election Day.
Two days ahead of Halloween, the former president walked out just after the playing of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which has become a staple at many of his campaign rallies.
Trump began his remarks by saying that things are “going very well” but noted some “bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught.”
Reading from paper on the podium in front of him, Trump began by criticizing Kamala Harris, saying she “has obliterated our borders” and has “caused so much destruction and death at home and abroad.”
Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC uses vulgarity demeaning women to describe Harris as a ‘communist’
Elon Musk’s super political action committee created an ad attacking Vice President Kamala Harris that includes multiple references to a vulgarity often used to demean women before calling her a “communist.”
The 35-second video from America PAC begins with a warning that it “contains multiple instances of the C-word.”
Calling Harris “a big ole C-word,” a narrator describes the Democratic nominee as a “tax-hiking, regulation-loving, gun-grabbing communist,” over images of her, as well as an illustration of a cat in a Soviet-style military uniform.
Musk endorsed Trump earlier this year and has appeared both at his rallies and at his own pro-Trump events throughout the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Both Musk and Trump have repeatedly referenced Harris as “Comrade Kamala,” implying that as president she would seek to implement socialist policies in the U.S.
The post is getting attention as Trump and his allies use increasingly inflammatory language in the final stretch of the campaign. Trump has repeatedly ridiculed Harris, at one point calling her “mentally impaired.” He has referred to CNN’s Anderson Cooper with a woman’s name, evoking the trope of gay men as effeminate. A Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday featured multiple crude and racist jokes, including one from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
A spokesperson for the PAC declined to comment on the video.
Puerto Rico’s archbishop calls on Trump to disavow comedian’s rally comments
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico. — The archbishop of Puerto Rico, Roberto O. González Nieves, has joined a long list of Puerto Ricans decrying the comments a comedian made at a Donald Trump rally on Sunday that disparaged the island.
González said in a letter that he was “dismayed and appalled” after hearing Tony Hinchcliffe say, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
González called on Trump to disavow the comments, saying it was insufficient that his campaign issued a brief apology.
“It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments,” González wrote.
The archbishop said that while he enjoys a good joke, humor has its limits.
“It should not insult or denigrate the dignity and sacredness of people,” he wrote. “These kinds of remarks should not be a part of the political discourse of a civilized society.”
Trump’s event at Mar-a-Lago has gotten underway with operatic and Broadway musical selections
Dozens of supporters, many clad in pro-Trump gear, stood near their seats and craned their necks to see if the GOP nominee and former president were about to enter an ornate Mar-a-Lago room set up for his remarks.
Several American flags and a screen with the words, “TRUMP WILL FIX IT!” were set up along the platform from which Trump was expected to speak.
‘We have to forgive and let it go,’ Trump supporter says Madison Square Garden rally remarks
A supporter of Trump who attended his event at Mar-a-Lago and heads the Republican Latino Club of Palm Beach said in Spanish it was important to clarify that the former president was not the one who made the crude comments about Puerto Rico.
“He is a comedian. He tries to be funny and says a lot of nonsense. The man is dumb. He has no clue about Puerto Rico and doesn’t know our culture. He screwed up. We have to forgive and let it go,” said Lydia Maldonado, who is Puerto Rican. “Our economy needs a change. Enough of this.”
The Allentown School District is closed ahead of Trump’s Pennsylvania visit
The district said in a statement that schools will be closed “out of an abundance of caution” since the rally is “expected to bring large crowds, heavy traffic and potential disruptions that may impact the safety and security of our students and staff.”
Trump is due to speak at the PPL Center in downtown Allentown at 7 p.m. ET.
Podcast host Joe Rogan polls listeners on a potential interview with Harris
In a post on the social platform X, Rogan says the Democrat’s campaign offered a date for Tuesday for an hourlong conversation, but that he would have had to meet her on the road. Rogan said he feels strongly that the conversation is best when done in his studio in Austin, Texas.
He headlined the post: “!! Austin TX podcast or let her walk. Thoughts?”
Asked for comment, a Harris campaign official said they were willing to sit down with Rogan when Harris was in Texas last week, but Rogan couldn’t accommodate.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the campaign’s internal deliberations, said Rogan was offered the option of joining Harris on the road but that Rogan has insisted that the conversation be taped in Austin.
Trump sat down with Rogan for three hours last Friday in Texas.
Harris aide says Washington speech will focus on the ‘clear choice voters are facing this election’
Vice President Kamala Harris, who spent years working as a prosecutor, has spent her campaign for president laying out the case to voters for why she should be elected, a top aide said Tuesday.
Cedric Richmond says over the past three months Harris has given her opening statement and laid out evidence and the facts for voters.
On Tuesday, she’ll deliver a speech meant to sum it all up.
“She’ll make her closing argument directly to the American people — or the jury — and that’s who’s going to decide the outcome of this election,” he said. “And that’s how it should be.”
Richmond says the speech will be about the “clear choice voters are facing this election between Trump and his obsession with himself versus her new generation of leadership that is focused on the American people.”
Harris to focus on what her generation of leadership ‘really means’ in Washington speech
Vice President Kamala Harris chose the area near the White House and Washington Monument to speak on Tuesday because “it’s a reminder of the gravity of the job,” her campaign chairwoman says.
Campaign leader Jen O’Malley Dillon says the location, where Donald Trump helped incite a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021, is a visual reminder of how much a president can do for good — or for ill.
It’s a “stark visualization of probably the most infamous example of Donald Trump and how he’s used his power for bad,” she said.
But Harris won’t spend a lot of time rehashing the violence of that day or recounting Trump’s continued efforts to lie about the election and sow doubt over voting. O’Malley Dillon says Harris will focus on talking about what her generation of leadership “really means,” and how much she will work to shape the country and impact people’s lives for the better.
Harris to sit for interviews in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and elsewhere on Tuesday
Vice President Kamala Harris is doing five interviews Tuesday, including one with a Spanish-language radio in Pennsylvania aimed at Latino voters, in particular Puerto Ricans.
The interviews come after a comic at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday made racist and vile jokes that singled out Puerto Ricans among other groups. Trump did not denounce the racist jokes. But he claimed he didn’t know the comic who gave a live performance at the venue before the Republican nominee took the stage.
Harris is also doing interviews in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. That’s before she gives a speech in Washington later Tuesday where she’ll lay out her closing arguments.
‘I don’t know him,’ Trump says of comedian from New York rally without denouncing his remarks
Donald Trump said he doesn’t know the comic who made racist and vile jokes at his big Madison Square Garden rally. But he’s not denouncing the comments either.
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump told ABC News in an interview Tuesday ahead of his remarks at Mar-a-Lago, according to the network.
The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, had told a series of raunchy and crude jokes, including calling Puerto Rico an “island of floating garbage.”
The comments have drawn outrage from Puerto Rican leaders with just a week to go before the election.
In the interview, Trump also insisted he hadn’t heard Hinchcliffe’s comments, according to ABC. But, “When asked what he made of them, he did not take the opportunity to denounce them, repeating that he didn’t hear the comments.”
Trump supporters are gathering near the entrance of Mar-a-Lago’s main ballroom
The former president has arrived at his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida. He is set to meet with reporters at 10 a.m. ET. It is unclear whether the Republican will take questions.
Harris calls Los Angeles Times and Washington Post decisions not to endorse in the presidential race ‘disappointing’
The Democratic presidential nominee commented during an interview with Charlamagne tha God, DJ Envy, and Loren LoRosa for “The Breakfast Club” that aired Tuesday morning.
Both newspapers announced last week that they will not make endorsements in the presidential contest between Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
Harris sought to tie the decisions to billionaires in “Donald Trump’s club.”
Both publications are owned by wealthy executives, Jeff Bezos at the Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong at the Times.
Arab American voters make their choice — Harris, Trump or neither — in the election’s final days
DEARBORN, Mich. — Bowls of labneh and platters of za’atar bread covered the tables in a Lebanese restaurant near Detroit, yet no one seemed to have much of an appetite.
On one side were Kamala Harris ’ top emissaries to the Arab American community. On the other were local leaders who were explaining — once again — why many in the community couldn’t vote for the vice president because of the war in Gaza.
“I love this country, but I’ll tell you, we have never been so disappointed in this country as we are now,” said Nabih H. Ayad, chairman of the Arab American Civil Rights League. “We wanted to give the Democratic Party the opportunity to do something, and they haven’t.”
“The one line we can’t cross,” Ayad said, “is genocide.”
▶ Read more on what Arab Americans are saying about the election
GOP works to turn out pro-Trump Jewish voters in swing states to trim Democrats’ edge
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. — Rachel Weinberg calls herself a religious Jew first, then a proud American. She said she has only one choice for president: Donald Trump.
“I don’t like everything he says,” the 72-year-old retired preschool teacher from Michigan said after volunteer canvassers for the Republican Jewish Coalition knocked on her door Sunday. “But I vote for Israel. It is our life. I support Israel. Trump supports Israel with his mouth and his actions.”
Weinberg’s home in West Bloomfield, in vote-rich Oakland County, was among more than 20 that the Republican Jewish Coalition was visiting that morning. She has voted for Trump in previous elections as well.
The door-to-door outreach to Jewish voters with a history of backing Republicans is part of a new effort the group is undertaking this year in five presidential battleground states in hopes of boosting Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.
▶ Read more about Republicans’ outreach to Jewish voters
