Live coverage: Kamala Harris holds rally at The Ellipse, Biden labels Trump supporters ‘garbage’

Joe Biden has derailed his party’s presidential candidate’s closing message with an extraordinary broadside against Donald Trump’s supporters.

Welcome to our live coverage of the US election campaign.

We have a week to go until, at long last, the polls close in the contest between former president Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, and current Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat.

Earlier this week we brought you live coverage of Mr Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, which was pitched by his campaign as a sample of his closing argument.

Today we are doing the same for Ms Harris. She addressed a crowd of supporters at The Ellipse in America’s capital, Washington D.C., a location near the White House, and the same spot where Mr Trump riled up his supporters before the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

But her message may have been lost amid the controversy sparked by current President Joe Biden, who went and labelled Mr Trump’s supporters “garbage”.

The White House appeared to be panicked over the remark. It quickly tried to clean up the president’s remarks, with a spokesman saying he’d been referring to the “hateful rhetoric” at the rally, not Trump’s backers.

Read on for the latest updates.

Ms Harris’s supporters gathering at The Ellipse today. Picture: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images via AFP

Originally published as Live coverage: Kamala Harris holds rally at The Ellipse, Biden labels Trump supporters ‘garbage’