More than 75,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to hear Vice President Kamala Harris‘ closing argument speech at the same site of former President Donald Trump‘s infamous “Save America” rally that preceded the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Harris’ event at the Ellipse arrived one week before Election Day and followed Trump’s closing arguments at Madison Square Garden on Sunday that received backlash for its inflammatory and racist rhetoric.
As the vice president took the stage Tuesday night, her campaign’s rapid response director, Ammar Moussa, posted to his account on X, formerly Twitter, that there were “OVER 75,000 people on the National Mall to watch Kamala Harris deliver her closing remarks.”
“Here. We. Go,” Moussa added.
In her speech at the Ellipse, Harris said former president Donald Trump “has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other.”
The vice president also criticized Trump’s comments about going after the “enemy from within” if elected to the White House. Despite receiving immense pushback for the comments in recent weeks, Trump repeated the phrase during his Madison Square Garden speech, telling supporters, “We’re running against a massive, crooked, malicious leftist machine that’s running the Democrat Party. They are smart and vicious, they are the enemy within, we must defeat them.”
Reacting to the speech, MSMBC’s Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid immediately said it was a good speech that would resonate with voters.
“Damn good speech,” Maddow said.”She did a very good job delivering the speech, and I think it was probably the most important speech of her life thus far.”