WASHINGTON — Democrat Kamala Harris will deliver her campaign's ''closing argument'' Tuesday from the same spot in Washington where Republican Donald Trump helped incite a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
She chose the spot to draw a contrast between her vision for the country and Trump's continued lies about the 2020 election, and the risks she says his return to the White House would pose for the nation.
In 2021, thousands of his supporters stood on the grassy Ellipse just off Constitution Avenue, not far from the Washington Monument, as an angry Trump told his supporters the election had been stolen from him.
''We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about," Trump told the crowd. ''And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.''
'' And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.''
Some details on what led to Trump's Jan. 6 appearance on the Ellipse and what transpired.
The backdrop: A failed effort to overturn the election
Trump's speech came after weeks of failed legal challenges in which Trump claimed widespread voter fraud. His attorneys put forward unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, including the idea that voting machines were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez. The challenges were roundly dismissed, including by judges who had been appointed by Trump himself or other Republicans.