Vice President Harris delivered a speech Tuesday on the White House Ellipse in Washington, D.C. — the very site at which former President Trump gave remarks to a crowd that later incited a riot at the Capitol.
Harris spoke to a fired-up audience that numbered in the tens of thousands, invoking many of the same warnings she’s made on the campaign trail about Trump in her speech —that he is a threat to democracy and is consumed by his grievances and desire for retribution.
She encouraged the crowd and voters to move on from the Trump political era — and rounded out her speech by calling him a “petty tyrant.”
“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 in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America,” Harris said.
Harris was flanked for her speech by large blue USA signs on either side of her with the White House lit up in the background. The Harris campaign estimated 75,000 people were on the National Mall just before she arrived.
Harris later in her speech said that patriots throughout history “did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives, only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”
“The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised,” the vice president said.
Her speech touched on several issues she’s focused on over the course of her short three-month campaign, including health care, reproductive rights and the economy.
But choice of location also drove home Harris’s rebuke of Trump over Jan. 6, 2021 — when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’s count of Electoral College votes that affirmed President Biden won the 2020 election.
“Americans died as a result of that attack; 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And while Donald Trump sat in the White House watching, as the violence unfolded on television, he was told by staff that the mob wanted to kill his own vice president. Donald Trump responded with two words: ‘So what?’” she said. “That’s who Donald Trump is.”
More than 1,500 people have been prosecuted over the Jan. 6 riot, according to the Justice Department. Six people died, including a police officer and a woman who was shot attempting to crawl through broken glass into the Speaker’s Lobby, just outside the House chamber where the vote was taking place.
Harris, as vice president-elect, served as a senator then and says she was on the Hill on Jan. 6, but she seldom speaks about her personal experience that day.
At the ellipse, Harris relayed Trump’s remarks about “the enemy within” — a suggestion that he would go after his political rivals if elected.
“What Donald Trump has never understood is that ‘E pluribus unum,’ out of many one, isn’t just a phrase on a dollar bill. It is a living truth about the heart of our nation. Our democracy, it doesn’t require us to agree on anything,” she added. “And the fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within.”
“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table,” she added.
The vice president called her political rival “unstable,” “obsessed with revenge,” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power.” She has labeled Trump unhinged and power hungry in the past, but steers clear of directly labeling him a fascist, though she has agreed with that term in interviews.
The speech comes as part of Harris’s closing argument less than a week before Election Day, in which she’s largely focused on the former president. Her campaign has argued in the final stretch that tens of millions of Americans are frustrated by the division in politics.
Harris continued in her speech with the theme that she plans to turn the page, although she has struggled to convince voters that her presidency would look different from President Biden’s presidency. She also outlined some of her plans, including to combat price gouging and to boost housing affordability.
“I have been honored to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president, but I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office. My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different,” Harris said.
Polls in recent weeks have shown a tightened race and a shift in Trump’s favor.
Trump has a 54 percent chance of winning the election, according to the Decision Desk HQ/ The Hill’s model prediction. Harris has a slight lead over Trump, polling nationally at 48.6 percent support compared to Trump’s 47.8 percent, the aggregate polling found.
But the enthusiasm for Harris was also shown on Tuesday by the massive crowds showing up in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.; neighboring Maryland; and Northern Virginia are all areas where Harris has wide support, and thousands of supporters were lined up hours before the event.
Trump has suggested, as he did in 2020, that he would only accept the election results if he deemed them “free and fair.”
Trump heavily contested his loss that year, with a multitude of court cases that were thrown out for lack of standing, with legal challenges reaching all the way up to the Supreme Court.
His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has been careful not to cast the 2020 election as one that Trump lost, insisting instead that the 2024 election should be about the future.
Harris, too, spent part of her speech focused on what she is promising America should she win in November.
“America, we know what Donald Trump has in mind. More chaos. More division. And policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else. I offer a different path,” she told the crowd.
“I pledge to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to make your lives better. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress,” she added.
“And I pledge to be a president for all Americans. To always put country above party and above self.”
