Trump Pays Kamala Harris Another Accidental Compliment & Everyone's Calling Him On It

First, Donald Trump complimented Kamala Harris' looks, and now he's pining for the days when she helped make San Francisco a city he admired. So, did he fall out of a coconut tree head-first and forget that he's supposed to be running against the vice president or what?

Trump was all prepared to keep hammering away at Joe Biden, but now he's found himself facing a new challenger. The shake-up to the Democratic ticket has apparently rattled him a bit, as some of his attacks on Harris aren't just weak but laced with praise for the former senator. During a rally in Cochise County, Arizona, his denunciation of the California Dem started out with your standard Trump stuff: hyperbole about how she alone was responsible for some colossal catastrophe and no evidence to back up his claim. "She destroyed San Francisco, absolutely destroyed it. She destroyed California," he said (via Acyn on X). "You can't go into California; you can't go into San Francisco. It's not livable." There is irrefutable proof that people can, indeed, visit and live in these places, but it was Trump's next line that he got called out for on Fox News. "Fifteen years ago, it was the best city in the country," he said. "One of the best cities in the world."

Guess who was the district attorney of San Francisco during the halcyon days that Trump decided to draw attention to? None other than the woman he was trying to criticize. On top of that, another political nemesis of his, California governor Gavin Newsom, was mayor of the city.

On Fox News (via Kamala HQ on X), Jessica Tarlov cooked Donald Trump for accidentally praising Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom. "I'm sure they appreciate the compliment about their work there," she said. So much has changed since the era Donald was reflecting on. Gavin's ex, Kimberly Guilfoyle, was still a co-host on Tarlov's Fox News show, "The Five," back then, and she hadn't yet started dating Donald Trump Jr. The elder Donald, meanwhile, was apparently a fan of the work Harris was doing.

As San Francisco DA, one of Harris' policies received quite the endorsement from a powerful Republican. California's governor at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger, liked her "Back on Track" initiative so much that he instituted a version of the program statewide in 2009 — 15 years ago. Two years later, Harris had moved up a rung on the political ladder and was serving as California's attorney general. According to NPR, this is when Trump wrote her campaign a $5,000 check for her reelection bid. He contributed an additional $1,000 to his future rival in 2013, just two years before he made his first announcement that he was going to run for president.

Trump's former support for Harris might explain why he seems to sometimes forget that he's supposed to be attacking her record. An example of Trump losing the plot during his presidential campaign is his gushing over Harris' good looks during his X Spaces interview with Elon Musk. At one point, he said of the vice president, "She's a beautiful woman, so we'll leave it at that."