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Kamala Harris’ Closing Argument: Turn the Page From ‘Chaos’

At the site of Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, the vice president asked Americans to vote for her new generation of leadership.

Harris delivers remarks during a campaign event at the Ellipse near the White House.
Stephanie Scarbrough/AP

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Under the soft light of the White House, Kamala Harris made the most expansive case yet for why Americans should support her candidacy over Donald Trump’s, asking voters to reject his “chaos” and choose a different path forward.

“It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or one ruled by chaos and division,” Harris said, surrounded by what her campaign said was 75,000 attendees spilling out onto the National Mall, with hundreds holding up American flags and USA signs.

The highly publicized speech was meant to be the closing argument for the three-month-long campaign that shook up the presidential race entirely, breathing new life into Democrats’ chance to keep the White House. Harris sought to cast her candidacy as part of a new generation, rooted in the common good, that’s fighting to dispel the old guard of leadership now represented by the former president, whom she likened to a “petty tyrant.”