Earlier this year Kamala Harris made headlines when she claimed to be a fan of Tupac's music back when she was a pot-smoking college kid. She made this claim on a nationally syndicated hip-hop morning show after being accused of being against marijuana legalization. Her father later attacked her for making the claim but the hosts of the talk show believed her. After all, it sort of made sense at the time. She spent time the Bay Area in California and that's also where Tupac came from. Why wouldn't she be a fan of his music when she was younger?
But two Google searches later and people were scratching their heads in confusion. Kamala finished college in 1988 and Tupac didn't release his first album until 1991. Her story didn't check out. Did she really smoke weed while listening to gangster rap music in college? Probably not. Kamala lied about listening to Tupac just like she probably lied about smoking marijuana.
She may have lied about being a fan of hip hop, but she's still a huge fan of flip flop. In short, Kamala is a Johnny Come-Lately on marijuana legalization. As a prosecutor in California she spent years putting marijuana users behind bars. She also spent years arresting and prosecuting sex workers. She's was previously an opponent of both marijuana legalization and legal sex work but now claims she's a lifelong progressive who always supported these causes. She flip flopped about these stances and more recently she lied about flip flopping.
When it comes to the death penalty, Kamala is no different. She recently praised Gov. Gavin Newsom after he said he'd sign an executive order halting the death penalty. She says the death penalty is wrong. But when she was California’s attorney general, Kamala openly defended and supported capital punishment.
Take the case of Jones v. Davis, for example. Ernest Jones, a man on death row for upward of 25 years for raping and murdering his girlfriend’s mother. In 2015, a federal judge decided the excessive delay in Jones' execution violated the Eighth Amendment - no cruel and unusual punishment. This made Jones' sentence unconstitutional. But government prosecutors led by Harris appealed the ruling and removed the legal barrier that had been issued.
Local progressives were furious. An op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle argued, “Why Does Kamala Harris Defend the Death Penalty?” They claimed prosecutors have wide discretion when recommending punishment for defendants with “no obligation to pursue the death penalty.”
Just so we're clear, I'm not saying I personally have a problem with the death penalty when there's overwhelming evidence that a criminal committed a terrible deed, but I'm not a progressive Democrat running for President in California. Kamala lied. She was an anti-marijuana, anti-sex-work, pro-death penalty neo-con before she was a progressive Democrat. Don't let her fool you. She'll say anything to get elected (and she has).