WASHINGTON—Kamala Harris made her presidential bid’s “closing argument” Tuesday night, warning an electrified crowd of tens of thousands that Donald Trump is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”
She alluded to Trump’s recent threats to use the U.S. military against Americans who disagree with him, implicitly comparing her GOP opponent to King George III, the British monarch who suffered from mental illness and spoke loquaciously until foam ran out of his mouth.
“Nearly 250 years ago America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant,” she said at the Ellipse, a location loaded with symbolism.
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The Ellipse is where Trump, on Jan. 6, 2021, riled up his followers to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as president. The expansive lawn on the National Mall sits just behind the White House, where Harris hopes to live come January.
“Americans died as a result of that attack,” Harris said, noting that as the violence unfolded on television that day, Trump’s response to his staff describing how protesters wanted to kill Mike Pence was reportedly, “So what?”
With the White House behind her, Harris said one of Trump’s “highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers on January 6th.”
The Metropolitan Police Department originally expected 20,000 attendees at the Ellipse, but that number ballooned to more than 52,000. More than 75,000 attended, a Harris campaign official told the Daily Beast, the largest crowd Harris has drawn this year.
“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power, trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” Harris warned Tuesday night. “That is who he is.”
Her aspirational speech was also laden with policy as she recapped her campaign promises to give tax cuts to middle-class families and entrepreneurs, protect and expand affordable health care, make housing affordable and—an issue paramount to her campaign—make abortion legal nationally and fight “Trump abortion bans” at the state level.
The speech marked the beginning of the end of a whirlwind three-month campaign. Harris’ entrance into the race after Biden stepped aside sparked wild enthusiasm among Democrats, and though she insisted she’s the “underdog,” her party was riding high for months.
But in the final weeks of the campaign, the Democratic candidate’s apparent lead over Trump has slipped, leaving them deadlocked in the polls just days away from Election Day.
A sense of deflation mingled with signs of hope in the shadows of the Washington Monument Tuesday night. Audience members who spoke to the Daily Beast said that they were hopeful Harris would defeat Trump, but few were confident, even though they streamed like a pilgrimage to the Ellipse to witness history.
Inside the security barriers, attendees waved American flags. Outside the fences, throngs of people looked on, with the crowd stretching past the Washington Monument and out of sight.
Harris urged everyone who came to vote on Tuesday.
“I’ve lived the Promise of America,” she said. “I see the Promise of America in all of you.”
