US Vice President
Kamala Harris described Republican nominee
Donald Trump as a fraudster and sexual predator in her first campaign rally as candidate for president in the 2024 election.
Harris spoke in a packed high school gymnasium in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where the crowd was in a raucous mood, cheering and chanting "Kamala" for nearly a minute after she took the stage.
"I will spend the coming weeks continuing to unite our party so that we are ready to win in November," Harris, 59, said at the rally in Milwaukee, just two days after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed his deputy to succeed him.
After praising Biden and thanking Democrats for their trust, Harris attacked Trump and outlined a vision of what her presidency would look like.
"I took on perpetrators of all kinds," she said of her time as a prosecutor and attorney general of California.
"Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type."
She promised to fight for the middle class and work to eradicate poverty. But one of her loudest applause lines came on the subject of abortion rights.
"We'll stop Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do!" she said to a roar from the crowd.
"And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the United States, I will sign it into law."
Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, would be the first female US president if elected.
Political watchers had warned that Democrats could be plagued by in-fighting over choosing Biden's replacement. But the centre-left party quickly coalesced around Harris after Biden gave her his immediate endorsement.
Party leaders and delegates say Biden's decision has re-energized Democrats as they scramble to launch Harris' campaign to take on Trump.
Harris' path to becoming the Democrats' official nominee at their national convention in Chicago next month was cleared on Monday evening.
US media outlets, which have been tracking the endorsements of delegates to the convention, said she had secured pledges from far more than the 1,976 delegates needed.
The two Democratic leaders in the US Congress, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, gave their full support Harris on Tuesday.
