Harris dismisses the prosecutor’s criticism of the past in the Charlamagne tha God interview | 2024 US Election News

From the early days of her candidacy, there was one topic over Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid: her record on criminal justice reform in the United States.

On Tuesday, Harris – the Democratic presidential nominee – got a chance to address some of the criticism, in a town hall interview with host Charlamagne tha God.

It was also an opportunity for Harris, the former attorney general of California, to strengthen support among the Black community.

Although the majority of black voters identify with the Democratic Party, recent polls show their support for Harris is not as strong as in 2020, when fellow Democrat Joe Biden is running for president.

Harris took offense Tuesday, quickly steering the conversation toward setting the record straight about his candidacy.

“People say you come off as a very scripted person,” began Charlamagne, in the first minute of their conversation. “They say you like to stick to your talking points -“

The vice president came in quickly. “That would be called discipline,” he joked.

It was an apparent attempt to draw a contrast between him and his Republican rival Donald Trump, whose public appearances are often described as running.

Harris continued to offer sharp rebuttals to criticism of her public appearances as buttoned up.

“What do you say to people who say you live in talking points?” Charlamagne asked.

“I was like, ‘You’re welcome,'” he replied.

The prosecutor passed under the light

A former prosecutor turned San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Harris has long faced scrutiny for his approach to criminal justice.

In the campaign for this election cycle, Harris’ allies want to increase his base for the benefit of the Democrat, framing the race as a battle between “prosecutor” and “criminal”.

Trump, after all, has 34 felonies to his name, after being found guilty in May of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an older movie star.

Harris himself relies on that framework. On July 23, shortly after he launched his presidential campaign, Harris made a distinction between himself and Trump, who faces four counts of criminal charges.

“Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as a member of the United States senator, I was elected as the attorney general of the state of California, and I was a prosecutor before that,” said Harris speaking at a meeting in Wisconsin.

“And in those roles, I faced abusers of all kinds: abusers who abused women, fraudsters who robbed consumers, fraudsters who broke the law for their own gain.” So hear me when I say, I know the type of Donald Trump. “

But critics have criticized Harris for that record as a prosecutor, with members of both the right and the left criticizing his policies.

Progressives, on the other hand, have criticized his heavy-handed approach to issues like student truancy: Harris famously championed a state law that would make parents eligible for truancy if their child has been absent from school without an excuse.

In 2014, Harris again opposed calls for an independent review process for the use of lethal force by police.

Critics at the time argued that local prosecutors worked closely with the police and therefore could not be objective when deciding whether to prosecute. Harris, however, said, “I don’t think it would be good public policy to make decisions for elected district attorneys.”

His opponents on the right, meanwhile, have accused Harris of neglecting crime and failing to adequately support law enforcement.

Prohibition of marijuana

In his interview with Charlamagne, Harris sought to deflect his criticism by characterizing it as a product of disinformation.

“One of the biggest challenges I face is disrespect and ignorance,” Harris told the broadcaster. “And there is a purpose. Because it’s meant to make people believe that somehow they shouldn’t believe that the work I’ve done has happened and has a purpose.”

Charlamagne, for his part, asked Harris to address the many rumors surrounding his campaign.

“One of the biggest allegations you face is that you targeted and locked up thousands of black men in San Francisco for weed. Some say you did it to improve your career. Some say he did it out of pure hatred for Black men,” he asked: “What are the facts of that situation?”

Harris denied the allegations, replying, “It’s just not true.”

He then focused on his work to reduce the penalties for possession of marijuana, an issue that disproportionately affects Black men.

A 2020 analysis from the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, found that blacks are 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for possession of the drug, compared to whites. The report, however, found no significant difference in marijuana use between the two nations.

That disparity in incarceration rates contributes to the higher overall incarceration rates for Black men in the US. The Pew Research Center found that, in 2020, black adults faced five times the incarceration rate of their white counterparts.

Referring to this discrepancy, Harris told Charlamagne that he would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level if elected president.

“My pledge is that, as president, I will work to eliminate crime, because I know very well how those laws have been used to have a negative impact on certain people, especially black men,” he said on Tuesday.

About 24 states have taken steps to legalize small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. But at the federal level, the drug remains illegal, even though the Biden administration has taken steps to lower the penalties.

In May, for example, the Biden Justice Department initiated new legislation to reclassify marijuana as a “Schedule III drug”, down from the highest level under the Controlled Substances Act’s five-tier system.

That rearrangement makes the drug acceptable for medical use. It also revealed a change in the government’s position, admitting that marijuana is not as dangerous as other drugs in the previous category, such as heroin.

“As vice president, [I] I’ve been the champion of getting marijuana off the show,” Harris told Charlamagne. “So instead of it being put up there with heroin, we’re taking it down.”

Attacking Trump in ‘stop and frisk’

Harris not only defended his criminal justice work as “progressive”, but also attacked his Republican rival Trump for policies he warned would be harmful to the Black community.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has pushed for a crackdown on crime in the US, proposing policies that critics warn could increase the excessive use of force among law enforcement officials — and create violations of civil liberties.

Last month, for example, Trump floated the idea of ​​having “one really bad, bad day” for law enforcement to deal with property crime without restraint.

He also pledged to strengthen police immunity from prosecution and push for greater use of “stop and frisk” policies.

“You have to have a stop-and-frisk policy,” Trump told the Fox and Friends TV show in August, envisioning a situation where a police officer spots a suspect on the street. “Stop and take their gun.”

While the US Constitution protects people from “unreasonable searches”, advocates say “stop-and-frisk” policies allow police to search suspects without touching them if they have “reasonable suspicion” they may be armed or dangerous.

But critics warn that “stop and frisk” has been used to racially abuse people without permission or reason. So some “stop and frisk” policies have been struck down as unconstitutional.

Harris echoed Trump’s support for “stop and disrupt” in Tuesday’s debate.

“My opponent”, he said, “will have a legal policy to stop and do things in an inappropriate way, which he said, if the police department doesn’t do it, they should get their money back”.

“There’s a lot at stake” in this election, he added, pointing to the potential danger to the Black community, which is unfairly targeted by those policies.

Pressure on Harris

Harris’ appearance at a radio town hall with Charlamagne comes one day after the Democratic candidate made another big tactic to Black voters, rolling out a “Black Men’s Opportunity Agenda”.

That agenda outlined plans to legalize marijuana, promote cryptocurrency and provide $1 million in “forgiveness” loans to Black entrepreneurs.

If elected, Harris would be the first woman — and the first person of mixed black and South Asian descent — to win the White House.

But while he’s overwhelmingly supportive of black Americans, some voters see concerns about how his numbers compare to the 2020 election. In that race, President Joe Biden carried 90 percent of the black vote, according to a survey by The New York Times and Siena College.

In contrast, only 76 percent of black voters plan to vote for Harris, Biden’s running mate, in this year’s election. That’s a significant drop — and the survey showed the lowest numbers among Black men.

Only 69 percent support Harris, compared to 81 percent of black women.

Trump has tried to capitalize on that demographic — and has even publicly questioned Harris’ identity as a black woman.

At his town hall Tuesday, Harris faced questions about his commitment to the Black community. Another caller asked him about his “non-association” with the Black church.

Harris also disputed that claim. He replied that he grew up in a black church.

“So first of all, those allegations come from the Trump team, because they are full of misinformation and lack of information,” he said. “They are trying to get me out of the people I have worked with and from whom I come from, to try to take advantage of this election.”