Trump hits Harris on decade-old California criminal justice policy

Donald Trump waded into one of the thorniest issues in California politics Thursday afternoon, hitting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for a decade-old criminal justice policy that’s returning to the ballot this November.

“I didn’t know this, but you’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950,” Trump told a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “You have thieves going into stores with calculators calculating how much it is, because if it’s less than $950 they can rob it and not get charged.”

“That was her that did that,” Trump said of Harris, who he said has “destroyed California,” along with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Trump was referring to Proposition 47, a landmark 2014 ballot measure that reduced penalties for many theft and drug crimes. Prop 47 required that thefts of less than $950 — a limit set by California’s Legislature in 2010 — be charged as a misdemeanor under state law. (Contrary to Trump’s comments, those thefts are still a crime.)

The initiative was seen as emblematic of the state’s shift toward a more progressive stance on criminal justice issues and came as the state was grappling with prison overcrowding.

Contrary to what Trump and other Republicans have insisted since Harris entered the presidential race, she was not involved in the campaign for Prop 47 — and stayed on the sidelines in many of the state’s biggest criminal justice debates during her time as attorney general.

At the time, she argued that because the attorney general is responsible for writing the official titles and summaries that appear alongside measures on the California ballot, it would have been inappropriate for her to take a position.

Prop 47 has been in the news this year as Californians prepare to vote on a new initiative , Proposition 36, that would roll back parts of it. Under Prop 36, repeat offenders of certain drug and theft crimes could be charged with a felony rather than a misdemeanor.

Trump did not mention Prop 36. Harris has not yet taken a position on the new initiative.

Trump’s comments Thursday were part of a broader effort to paint California as a dystopian preview of what a Harris presidency would do to the country as a whole.

“What they’ve done to that great state with the beautiful weather — like this weather, they have this weather all the time — and they have the ocean, they have the sun, they have everything good,” he said. “But what they’ve done to it is a shame, and she’s going to do the same thing to our country.”