Days after Vice President Kamala Harris took questions on her changing views on policy, her campaign sent out a memo criticizing Donald Trump on his “brazen flip flops,” including on marijuana reform, accusing the former president of “just making things up” ahead of the election.
Saturday morning, Trump signaled in a social media post he supports a ballot measure in Florida, where he lives, that would legalize marijuana recreationally. While calling for the state legislature to “prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go,” Trump said, “someone should not be a criminal in Florida, when this is legal in so many other States.”
“We do not need to ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them, and no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl laced marijuana,” Trump added.
The Harris campaign is framing Trump’s support for the measure as another change in policy in a long line of “brazen flip-flops,” according to a memo on Saturday, first obtained by ABC News.
“As of this morning, Trump now suggests he is for legalizing marijuana – but as President, his own Justice Department cracked down on marijuana offenses,” Ian Sams, a longtime Harris communications aide who joined the campaign earlier this month after a stint at the White House Counsel’s Office, said in the memo.
Trump’s record on marijuana has varied. While in office, his Justice Department announced it would remove an Obama-era policy that limited federal prosecutions for some sales of marijuana in states where it is legal, only for Trump to walk that back months later. He also expressed support for a bipartisan bill in 2018 to protect states’ pro-marijuana laws, but in 2019 he used part of his salary to pay for a promotional campaign highlighting the negative effects of marijuana use.
In a statement to ABC News, a Trump campaign official maintained, “President Trump has been consistent in his support for leaving this issue to the states for years.”
The memo comes just two days after Harris sat for her first wide-ranging interview with CNN more than a month after launching her campaign for president after President Joe Biden announced he was abandoning his reelection bid.
Harris’ role as vice president naturally required her to adopt Biden’s agenda and platform, but since her ascension to the top of the ticket, how her policy views may differ from Biden’s — and that of her 2019 campaign — have yet to be clearly defined.
“My values have not changed,” Harris said repeatedly in a CNN interview Thursday when pressed about her about-face on certain policy positions–particularly compared to what she ran in the 2020 primary.
The Harris team’s argument is that her record in office reflects her evolution on certain issues, but that Trump’s does not.
“As soon as Trump starts catching heat for his unpopular agenda and record,” Sams said, referencing Project 2025, “he rushes out to claim he would actually do the opposite. It’s a desperate play from a candidate whose back is up against the wall running against Vice President Harris.”
“But it demands scrutiny,” Sams argued. “He was President for four years, and how he exercised his power on these issues is the best metric for how he will do so again if he gets the chance. What he says now is just desperate pandering from a scared man who is worried he will lose.”
