Kamala Harris on Tuesday sought to remind Americans what life was like under Donald Trump
Kamala Harris on Tuesday sought to remind Americans what life was like under Donald Trump and then offered voters a different path forward if they send her to the White House, in a speech billed as her campaign’s closing argument.
“I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me,” she said, speaking before a massive crowd that spilled from the grassy Ellipse near the White House to the Washington Monument.
Some key moments from her half-hour speech:
Harris chose to speak from the Ellipse on purpose. It’s the same spot in Washington where Republican Donald Trump helped incite a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But the vice president didn’t devote much of her speech to the violence of that day, instead using the field between Constitution Avenue and the White House more as a backdrop — a quiet reminder of the different choices Americans face.
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other“, she said, adding that he wants back into the White House “not to focus on your problems, but to focus on his.”
Harris spent years working as a prosecutor. She was California’s attorney general before she became a U.S. senator. And she often says on the campaign trail that she’s only ever had one client — the people. In her speech, she talked about her past work taking on scammers, violent offenders who abused women and children, and cartels that trafficked in guns and human beings.
She said she’d bring with her to the White House an instinct to protect.
“There’s something about people being treated unfairly, or overlooked, that just gets to me“, she said.
One week before the election, Harris allowed that “I know many of you are still getting to know who I am.”
The Democratic nominee has been running for only three months in a compressed campaign launched after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Harris still is confronting voters who say they want to learn more about her and how she will govern.
