Kamala Harris urged People to write down the “subsequent chapter” for his or her nation and reject Donald Trump’s chaos and division as she delivered a robust closing argument to voters Tuesday in opposition to the glowing backdrop of the White Home.
The Democratic vice chairman warned in opposition to Trump’s lust for “unchecked energy” as she addressed a mass rally on the web site the place her Republican rival riled up a mob earlier than the lethal January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
“That is somebody who’s unstable, obsessive about revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked energy,” she mentioned within the speech, precisely per week earlier than People go to the polls in essentially the most dramatic and divisive election of recent instances.
However Harris then pivoted to an optimistic imaginative and prescient of the USA’ future, utilizing the setting of the White Home lit up in opposition to the night time behind her as a symbolic pitch to point out that she is prepared for the presidency.
“America, I’m right here tonight to say: that is not who we’re,” Harris instructed the large crowd of flag-waving supporters.
“Every of you has the facility to show the web page, and begin writing the subsequent chapter in essentially the most extraordinary story ever instructed.”
Harris’s marketing campaign claimed 75,000 folks attended the rally. The quantity couldn’t be instantly verified, however the crowd was unusually massive in an election that has seen heavy enthusiasm on either side.
Crowds stretched from the Ellipse, a park bordering the White Home grounds the place Harris spoke, all the best way again to the Washington Monument, the obelisk towering over the Nationwide Mall.
Talking from behind bulletproof screens subsequent to blue indicators saying “Freedom,” Harris warned that the election was a alternative between a “nation rooted in freedom for each American, or dominated by chaos and division.”
Harris reminded the gang that Trump stood on the identical spot almost 4 years in the past and “despatched an armed mob” to the Capitol.
After Trump urged supporters in a speech there to “battle like hell,” many then marched on the long-lasting domed seat of presidency to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, in an assault that left 140 law enforcement officials wounded and shocked the world.
However whereas her speech started with the dramatic assault on Trump, she quickly switched to a recap of her detailed plans to assist financially struggling middle-class People.
She received one of many largest cheers when she referred to Republicans in search of to curtail abortion, saying the federal government shouldn’t be “telling girls what to do with their our bodies.”
Harris additionally addressed one among her most important weaknesses — the truth that some voters nonetheless see her as a continuation of Biden, who dropped out of the White Home race in July.
“My presidency will probably be completely different, as a result of the challenges we face are completely different,” she vowed.
Though there may be nonetheless per week to go, the Harris marketing campaign forged her speech as a “closing argument” — a nod to her profession as a prosecutor.
“I consider this as a cleaning for what occurred on January 6,” mentioned Mitzi Maxwell, 69, who got here from Florida along with her mom to see “all of the love and keenness and pleasure that she (Harris) has change into recognized for.”
Some Harris supporters queued for greater than seven hours earlier than the speech, whose sheer scale and vitality was a direct problem to Trump, a politician who has all the time boasted about his capacity to attract crowds.
Harris and Trump stay in a lifeless warmth within the polls, with each desperately making an attempt to persuade undecided voters in seven key swing states.
Trump has spent the final two days making an attempt to tamp down a firestorm over his weekend rally in New York’s famed Madison Sq. Backyard, at which a warm-up comic jibed that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of rubbish.”
Biden on Tuesday got here beneath hearth for responding to the feedback by showing to name Trump’s supporters “rubbish,” though he later mentioned he was referring to the Republican’s rhetoric.
“The one rubbish I see floating out there may be his supporters,” Biden mentioned on a marketing campaign name for Harris.
Trump known as the feedback “horrible,” and his operating mate J.D. Vance mentioned they have been “disgusting.”
In a TV look, Trump mentioned the comic who made the feedback about Puerto Rico “most likely… should not have been there.”
Earlier, addressing supporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, nevertheless, Trump known as the New York occasion a “love fest,” the identical phrase he has used to explain the Capitol riot.
The Republican later rallied in blue-collar Allentown, in Pennsylvania, maybe essentially the most essential of the seven battleground states which can be anticipated to resolve the election — and a metropolis that’s house to a big Puerto Rican group.
Fears of a repeat of the chaos from 4 years in the past hold heavy over this 12 months’s election, with Trump repeatedly indicating that he may once more refuse to simply accept the outcome if he loses.
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