Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris made her closing argument last night in a speech to 75,000 at the Ellipse in Washington, a description applied as well to Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, and an indication the former prosecutor is setting the terms for deliberation in the final days of the election.

With seven days to go before a verdict, Donald Trump is on his heels.

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The former president appeared with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday to acknowledge the controversy surrounding disparaging jokes about Puerto Ricans made at his MAGA conclave Sunday, without apology.

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“Somebody said some bad things. Now, what they’ve done is taken somebody that has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with us, said something and they try to make a big deal,” Trump told Hannity. “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal.”

Musician Bad Bunny thought it was a big enough deal to share his indignation at the description of his native Puerto Rico as “an island of garbage” with his 45.6 million followers on Instagram and endorse Harris in the process. The episode was an unforced October surprise from the Trump campaign that could make the difference at the polls for Harris: half a million Puerto Ricans live in swing state Pennsylvania.

Trump, slumped in his chair, left it to Hannity to steer their conversation back to his campaign’s continued and baseless demonization of the trans community with a question about “gender-affirming care for minors: care without parental consent.”

“A young man leaves for school,” Trump answered on cue but slowly, as if trying to remember his lines, “and goes to school and the authority takes him over without parental consent and they do things to him that you don’t want to know about.”

Trump didn’t do himself any favors earlier in the day, either, with a “news conference” broadcast from his Mar-a-Lago club, where he rolled out a group of partisan victims of immigrant crime to cry for the cameras. The recycled stunt only highlighted the former president’s desperation in the face of what could be his final days in the political spotlight.

The 78-year-old looked tired and sounded exhausted as staff tried to clap away the air of doom hanging over his chandeliered ballroom.

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The contrast with Harris’ rally later that night couldn’t have been more stark.

The Democratic nominee arrived on stage at the Ellipse with no introductory speeches, firmly in command of a message directed at all Americans: “I offer a different path, and I ask for your vote.”

The speech was not only an epic troll of her twice-impeached opponent — at the site of Trump’s incitement to riot on January 6, 2021, with an audience that dwarfed any rally he’s held since — it was an affirmative message of change that was unapologetically rooted in both progressive values and patriotism.

“My parents would take me to marches in a stroller where crowds of people of all races, faiths, and walks of life came together to fight for the ideals of freedom and opportunity,” Harris said. She sees “the promise of America” in young people “who are voting for the first time, who are determined to live free from gun violence and to protect our planet and to shape the world they inherit. I see it in the women who refuse to accept a future without reproductive freedom, and the men who support them do.”

It was in the final passages of her speech, though, that her closing argument soared, recounting a history of the Republic that spoke to the choice voters face today.

“Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing, proved to the world that a government of by and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us, the patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmland and factory floors. They did not struggle, sacrifice and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms. They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”

“The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised,” Harris asserted for a jury of her peers. “Each of you has the power to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

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