Kamala Harris to attack Donald Trump at site of his January 6 speech

Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for free

The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

Kamala Harris will evoke the January 6 Capitol riot at her final big campaign speech on Tuesday, as she assails Donald Trump for his “endless desire for retribution” and urges voters to “turn the page” on his era.

Harris will make the speech at Washington’s Ellipse, the site of Trump’s speech in which he called on his supporters to “fight like hell” just before they stormed the Capitol buildings in a bit to halt Joe Biden from being declared president.

The vice-president’s campaign said the location had been chosen to highlight the contrast between her message and that of her Republican opponent, who she has repeatedly criticised as being focused on himself and his desire for revenge.

The speech, from just outside the White House, marks Harris’s “closing argument” with just a week to run in an increasingly tight race. The Financial Times poll tracker shows Harris and Trump in a virtual tie in the seven swing states that are likely to determine who wins.

As the November 5 election day has drawn closer, Harris has shifted away from issues such as the economy and instead boosted her argument that Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy.

Last week, she attacked the former president for being “increasingly unhinged and unstable” after John Kelly, Trump’s one-time chief of staff, told The New York Times that Trump was an “authoritarian” who admired Adolf Hitler and fit the “general definition of fascist”.

She has also criss-crossed the country for a series of campaign appearances with Liz Cheney, the conservative former Republican congresswoman who broke with Trump and her party over the 2021 Capitol attack and in September said she would be voting for Harris given the “danger that Donald Trump poses”.

Harris has also amplified her message on reproductive rights and abortion access in the final days of her campaign, telling voters that Trump could impose a national abortion ban if given another four years in the White House.

The sober warnings stand in stark contrast to the image of a “joyful warrior” that the Harris campaign cultivated over the summer, after she replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

But aides say her closing message will resonate with millions of voters who are frustrated by the coarseness and division that has plagued US politics in recent years.

Trump’s own attempt at a closing argument at New York’s Madison Square Garden at the weekend was overshadowed by racist and misogynist comments, with one speaker describing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and another comparing Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers”.

The Trump campaign — which has at times struggled to keep the former president focused on policy issues, such as the economy and immigration, where he has an edge with voters — on Monday hurried to limit the damage from the rally.

Trump has struck a darker tone in the final leg of his campaign, repeating his calls for “retribution” against his political enemies and repeatedly suggesting that the US faces grave threats from the “enemy within”.

“I know many of them. It’s just this amorphous group of people, but they’re smart and they’re vicious, and we have to defeat them,” Trump said in New York. “When I say the ‘enemy from within’, the other side goes crazy . . . They’ve done very bad things to this country.”