WASHINGTON — (AP) — 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. So she spent some time Tuesday talking about her career, her goals and background.
“I’ll be honest with you: I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. But here’s what I promise you: I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me."
Harris devoted a good chunk of her speech to talking about policies she'd enact if she were to win the White House, including helping first-time homeowners with down payments and aiding the so-called “sandwich generation" of adults who are caring for young children and older parents by allowing elder care to be funded by Medicare. She said she'd work to pass a bipartisan border security bill that tanked last year after Trump encouraged congressional Republicans to let it die.
And she said she would work to bring back abortion protections. “I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justice took away from the women of America,” Harris said. The Supreme Court, with three Trump-appointed justices, overturned federal protections of abortion in 2022. Abortion has since become one of the most motivating issues for the Democratic base in the 2024 election.
“On Day One, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” she said. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”
The Ellipse is a grassy expanse between the White House and the Washington Monument that has long played host to political events and national traditions like the annual holiday tree lighting. On Tuesday, the space was packed. Crowds spilled onto the National Mall back toward the Washington Monument, where giant screens and speakers were set up for people to hear and see from afar.
The cheers of the boisterous crowd could be heard from the White House driveway. Harris' campaign said it was her biggest rally to date. She's already packed stadiums and other venues with supporters during her rallies. Harris loves to needle Trump about crowd size — a particular preoccupation for the Republican leader, who claimed the campaign had to bus people in Tuesday to fill the space.
Harris boiled down criticism of Trump into two words: "petty tyrant."
She warned Trump is a man governed by grievances, one who would focus on himself and his “enemies list” when he got into the White House. She harked back to the nation's founding when Americans fought for freedom, then sped through decades of hard-fought civil rights battles.
“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," she said. "These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”
Just moments before Harris was to speak, Biden was on a campaign call reacting to a comic who called Puerto Rico garbage during a Trump rally last weekend. The president said, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."
He’d joined a national call organized by the advocacy group Voto Latino. Biden urged those on the call to “vote to keep Donald Trump out of the White House," adding, “He’s a true danger to not just Latinos but to all people."
Biden's remarks were quicky seized on by Republicans who said he was denigrating Trump supporters, a distraction for Harris when she is trying to reach out to GOP voters.
Biden quickly sent out a social media post seeking to clarify his remarks.
“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable," Biden said of Trump. “That’s all I meant to say.”
The event was framed as a campaign finale meant to lay out in stark terms the choice for voters next week. But it's far from Harris' last campaign event. She'll be hitting all the key battleground states as she makes her last pitch to voters.
She will headline events in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and on Thursday she will have rallies in Arizona and Nevada. More events are expected before Election Day.
The campaign is looking to pick up voters across many different demographics in the hope that a swing vote here and there may add up to a win in a razor's-edge race with Trump.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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