Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver the closing message of her presidential campaign on Oct. 29 at the site where Donald Trump instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
A senior Harris campaign official said the choice of the Ellipse, the circular park just south of the White House, is meant to contrast Harris’ vision for a first term versus Trump’s vision for a second.
The site suggests Harris will make democracy the overarching theme of her closing address. Trump hasn’t announced whether he’s giving a similar major address to close out his third campaign for president.
The Ellipse was where Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol as Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 election. The violent attack resulted in five deaths, including one of Trump’s own supporters.
Harris has returned to the themes of democracy and Trump’s authoritarian tendencies to court disaffected GOP voters. The vice president has campaigned recently in swing states with former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who led the Jan. 6 investigation into Trump and who lost her congressional seat after breaking with Trump.
Dozens of Trump White House aides have also broken with Trump and said they won’t vote for him again because of the threat he poses to the rule of law. Harris on Wednesday responded to reporting this week that Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, believes he meets the definition of a “fascist.” Kelly, in remarks to The New York Times and The Atlantic, also revealed that Trump privately praised Nazi leader Adolph Hitler as having done “some good things.”
Harris told reporters Wednesday that it’s “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
She added: “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power.”