(The Center Square) – Every four years, Americans make a choice between the two candidates they most trust to lead the nation.

On the surface, it’s Republican or Democrat. In decades past, it’s been budget hawk or big spender. In centuries past, it’s been isolationist or globalist.

But in 2024, it’s fascism or communism. At least, that’s the messaging neither candidate strayed far from during highly anticipated speeches on Tuesday.

“It’s a campaign of absolute hate,” Donald Trump said of his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Tuesday morning. “It’s a very big powerful party with smart people. But it’s vicious. They’re vicious and perhaps even trying to destroy our country.”

It’s a familiar refrain from the Republican presidential nominee who hopes to reclaim the White House for a second term in November. Standing on a platform of economic revitalization, conservative family values and national security, Trump has long cast Harris’s progressive views on criminal justice, abortion limits and government price controls as akin to socialism.

On Tuesday, however, it was the Biden administration’s border policies squarely in Trump’s crosshairs as he reflected on the murders of women and children perpetrated by undocumented migrants.

He said federal border policies, or lack thereof, leave the backdoor open for criminals, drug smugglers and terrorists in what he describes as the “most heartless and cold-blooded betrayal possible.”

“I always say in third world countries, banana republics, they’d fight them away with sticks and stones if they had to,” Trump said. “We let them come in, come on in, knowing in many cases they’re murderers, they’re drug lords, they’re traitors in so many ways to our country.”

The event, an intimate gathering inside of the former president’s famed resort, stood in stark contrast to his packed Sunday evening rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

During his hour-long speech on Tuesday, a somber tone maintained throughout, Trump said he would give restitution to victims of migrant crime, funded by assets seized from drug cartels.

“I know we talk about inflation, the economy, but there’s nothing more important to me than the fabric of our country being destroyed by people placed there, violently placed there as far as I’m concerned, foolishly stupidly placed there,” he said. “I think what’s happening on the border is the single biggest issue.”

Just a few hours later, Kamala Harris said during her “closing argument” speech in Washington, D.C., that Trump’s fearmongering and public criticism of a border security bill pending in Congress only makes matters worse.

“Politicians have got to stop treating immigration as an issue to scare up votes in an election and instead treat it as the serious challenge that it is, that we must finally come together to solve,” she said.

The Democratic nominee delivered her remarks on a stage placed at the site of where a mob stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021 – a moment she reflected upon for a crowd estimated at 50,000-strong.

“America. This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” Harris said. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”

She, too, promised a path toward economic prosperity for middle class voters, one that diverges from Trump’s “decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other.”

“That is who he is, but America I am here tonight to say that is not who we are,” she said. “We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.”