US Election 2024: Harris to deliver closing speech at the Ellipse. Know the significance of THIS venue near White House

US Election 2024: Democratic party nominee Kamala Harris will deliver what her team calls her campaign’s ‘closing argument’ from the Ellipse near the White House on Tuesday, October 29.

The Ellipse, sometimesreferred to as President’s Park South, is the same spot in Washington where Republican Donald Trump hosted his infamous ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6, 2021, which followed a deadly mob attack on the US Capitol.

The US Vice President’s campaign says Harris will give a speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday, exactly one week before Election Day, November 5. Harris is expected to urge voters to ‘turn the page’ toward a new era and away from Trump, according to ABC News.

Symbolism of the Ellipse

The venue assumes symbolic significance since it brings back memories of Trump’s 2021 speech as the US Congress was convening to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election. Democratic candidate Bidendefeated Republican Trump in that election.

At the Ellipse rally, Trump alleged voter fraud and urged supporters to fight. Hundreds then stormed the Capitol and indulged in arson and rioting in what many call an attempted self-coup d’état two months after Trump’s defeat.

Harris chose the spot to draw a contrast between her vision for the country and Trump’s continued ‘lies’ about the 2020 election, and the risks she says his return to the White House would pose for the nation, a report by US news agency Associated Press said.

20,000 Expected

Preparations are underway ahead of the speech, including the installation of tall black fencing to create a secure perimeter around the Ellipse, a CNN report said. As many as 20,000 people are expected to attend, with spillover onto the National Mall, according to the event’s National Park Service permit, as reported by the US media.

This will be Harris’s first major campaign speech outdoors in Washington as most of the big rallies this year have been in arenas or stadiums in battleground states.

The Vice President is expected to make her final case to voters from the Ellipse in what is being seen as one last opportunity before Election Day to contrast her campaign with that of Trump.

Harris may touch upon issues such as economy, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and her broader middle-class agenda. Even though the sharpest contrasts are likely to come on Trump’s character, the CNN report said.

The Background

In 2021, thousands of his supporters stood on the Ellipse Park, as an angry Trump told his supporters the election had been stolen from him.

“We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about,” Trump told the crowd. “And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election,” the former President said,

“ And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said

Trump’s speech came after weeks of failed legal challenges in which Trump claimed widespread voter fraud. His attorneys put forward unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, including the idea that voting machines were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez.

The challenges were roundly dismissed, including by judges who had been appointed by Trump himself or other Republicans, the AP report said.

On December 19, 2020 Trump said in a post on X (the Twitter): “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Trump told the crowd that day at the end of his speech it was time to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol with a rambling directive to get involved.

Hours later, Trump finally conceded and pledged an “orderly transition” of power to President-elect Joe Biden on January, 20, 2021

Trump was not at the US Capitol

In the congressional hearings on the events of January 6, 2021, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson recounted how Trump was dismissive when told that some in his crowd at the Ellipse were armed.

Trump went back to the White House instead. Rioters stormed the Senate chamber and ransacked Capitol offices for hours. They beat law enforcement personnel, leaving roughly 140 injured. Seven people died in the wake of the attack, including a rioter shot by police, and officers who later killed themselves.

More than 1,500 people have been charged in the Capitol siege in the years since.