By Nicole Gaudiano
Vice President Kamala Harris will condemn the "violence, chaos, and lawlessness" of insurrectionist rioters at U.S. Capitol during a speech in South Carolina on Saturday.
Her address will mark three years to the day a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in favor of the former president.
"They used violence and fear to try to overturn the results of a free and fair election, and to overrule the votes of millions of Americans," Harris plans to say, according to excerpts of her speech released Friday by her office.
"On that day, we saw violence, chaos and lawlessness, even though some so-called leaders still say it was a peaceful protest led by, quote, ‘great patriots.’"
Trump, who continues to deny the election results, has repeatedly praised the rioters as "great patriots."
Harris' speech at the 7th Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat in Myrtle Beach will follow President Joe Biden's forceful condemnation of Trump on Friday as the "election denier in chief" and as anti-American for supporting the insurrection.
“Let's be clear about the 2020 election. Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election — every one,” Biden said during a campaign event in Pennsylvania Friday. “But the legal path just took Trump back to the truth: That I’d won the election and he was a loser.”
As the retreat's keynote speaker, Harris will also tackle a "full-on assault" on freedoms across the nation, and will call on the public to defend American principles, her office said.
She'll also target attempts to ban books and restrict abortion rights, an issue that will be prominent for the Biden campaign.
"On one side, they want to ban books," she'll say. "On the other side, we want to ban assault weapons. They think the government should tell a woman what to do with her body. We trust women, and women trust us to protect their fundamental freedoms.”
She will also highlight the administration's commitment to Black Americans, including efforts to connect families to high-speed internet, to remove toxic lead pipes, and to invest in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
She'll discuss her work on Black maternal mortality, challenging states to expand Medicaid coverage for postpartum care from two to 12 months. Instead of three states, she'll report that 42 states now offer women a full year of coverage.
“And because you voted in 2020, President Biden and I have appointed more Black women judges than any administration in history, including the first Black woman ever to sit on the highest court in our land: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson," she plans to point out.