For law enforcement-loving supporters of President Trump, is “Kamala is a cop” a swipe or a compliment?
The president’s campaign is carefully maneuvering around a common criticism of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s choice of running mate: That her prosecutorial record shows she was authoritarian and strict rather than a liberal reformer, a message that undermines the president’s own law-and-order stance.
Following news that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee chose the California senator on Tuesday to be his running mate, some wings of criminal justice reform-minded conservatives and libertarians latched on to criticism of Harris that also comes from the far-left. The phrase “Kamala Harris is a cop” is now a meme, accusing Harris of having draconian policies as San Francisco’s district attorney for eight years and as California’s attorney general for six years.
Some conservatives shared a 2019 Democratic debate moment when Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard sharply attacked Harris’s prosecutorial record in perhaps the most defining “Kamala is a cop” moment, saying that Harris jailed people for marijuana offenses, denied a new DNA test for a man on death row believed by many to be convicted wrongfully (which Harris later said she feels awful about, but had no direct role in), and sought to increase cash bail when she was San Francisco’s district attorney (though she now supports eliminating cash bail).
But electorally minded Republicans are carefully trying to reconcile their support for law enforcement in the wake of nationwide riots and protests over race and policing and Trump’s law-and-order message, with the popular talking point that implicitly frames Harris as being on the side of police and a strict enforcer of the law.
Trump’s campaign appeared to make a reference to the sentiment that she was too forceful of a prosecutor while at the same time refraining from adopting a tone that is critical of police as a whole.
In the campaign’s first statement about Biden’s running-mate pick, Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson said that Harris will “try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party,” an apparent suggestion that Harris will pretend that her strict prosecutor record was actually liberal so she will win over left-wing voters.
But Pierson said that there isn’t a contradiction when the campaign references Harris’s prosecutorial record being criticized for being too strict while at the same time promoting a law-and-order agenda.
“It’s sort of conflating the issue,” Pierson told the Washington Examiner Tuesday. “I mean, she’s a phony. She was going after the wrong people. When you’re not going after gang members, but you’re going after citizens, for example, black men and marijuana — something that she herself admitted to doing. It’s really a double standard she’s trying to keep moving forward.”
Democrats are as amused by supporters of Trump accusing Harris of being a draconian cop as they are as the arguments that she is too soft.
“It’s hard, I think, for Donald Trump and others to attack her on that when she’s got a long record of, you know, prosecuting a lot of crime,” said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. “It’s hard to say that Kamala Harris isn’t for law and order.”
She cited Harris’s widely praised grilling in Senate confirmation hearings of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in addition to Harris’s desire as district attorney and attorney general “to try to fix” the criminal justice system “from the inside out.”
“In this day and age where everyone’s looking for reform in law enforcement,” Marsh added, “She’s got a long record of doing that. If you think she hasn’t done enough, well, now she’ll have the chance to do more.”
Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson suggested that Trump’s record undermines any attacks on Harris, who ran the last leg of her presidential campaign on being able to “prosecute the case against Trump.”
“Donald Trump’s commitment to law and order has always been a talking point — not a reality,” Ferguson said. “His worst nightmare is having to defend all the criminal activities of his administration and indicted conspirators who work for him against a successful former prosecutor and attorney general.”
Recognition that equating Harris to tough law enforcement could be counterproductive may be why most messaging coming from the Trump campaign about Harris this week has ignored the idea that she was too tough as a prosecutor entirely, and instead focuses on leftist aspects of Harris’s positions and record of supporting healthcare for illegal immigrants and being a co-sponsor of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Green New Deal.”
One Trump campaign video released Wednesday said Harris would “give cop killers a pass,” a reference to when she declined to seek the death penalty for a gang member who killed a police officer.
The Trump War Room Twitter account hasn’t tweeted the word “prosecutor” alongside “Harris” since before she dropped out of the Democratic primary last year. Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn suggested in a press call Tuesday that Harris’s prosecutor record shows she was not “tough on hardened criminals.”
