After Harris Calls for a Crackdown on Fentanyl, Trump Twists Her Position

When Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southern border on Friday, she called fentanyl a “scourge on our country” and said that as president she would “make it a top priority to disrupt the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States.”

Ms. Harris pledged to give more resources to law enforcement officials on the front lines, including additional personnel and machines that can detect fentanyl in vehicles. And she said she would take aim at the “global fentanyl supply chain,” vowing to “double the resources for the Department of Justice to extradite and prosecute transnational criminal organizations and the cartels.”

But that was not how her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, characterized her position on Sunday at a rally in Erie, Pa., where he made a false accusation against Ms. Harris that seemed intended to play on the fears and traumas of voters in communities that have been ravaged by fentanyl.

“She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” Mr. Trump said during a speech that stretched for 109 minutes. It was the second straight day that Mr. Trump had amplified the same false claim about Ms. Harris; he did so on Saturday in Wisconsin.

The former president did not offer context for his remarks, but his campaign pointed to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire that Ms. Harris had filled out in 2019 during her unsuccessful candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A question asking if Ms. Harris supported the decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use appeared to be checked “yes.” Ms. Harris wrote that it was “long past time that we changed our outdated and discriminatory criminalization of marijuana” and said that she favored treating drug addiction as a public health issue, focusing on rehabilitation instead of incarceration.

Neither Ms. Harris nor the questionnaire discussed fentanyl.

The Harris campaign declined to comment about Mr. Trump’s latest attack, but in the past, when the A.C.L.U. questionnaire has come up, campaign officials have noted that it does not reflect what she is proposing or running on.

Since Ms. Harris’s visit to the border, where she seemed to be battling Mr. Trump on turf he considers his own by calling for beefed up security and cracking down on asylum, Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his dark rhetoric. He has directed a stream of demeaning insults at Ms. Harris that drew criticism from some fellow Republicans and blamed the Biden-Harris administration for violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. “These are stone-cold killers,” he said.

Mr. Trump also devoted a portion of his speech to the problem of shoplifting in big cities, which he attributed to lax penalties for theft and other offenses and to the constraints he said were too often placed upon the police.

Then he offered up a jarring solution.

“We have to let the police do their job, and if they have to be extraordinarily rough …” he said, trailing off as the crowd cheered.

“Now if you had one really violent day,” he said a little later. And then added: “One rough hour, and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately. ”

Mr. Trump also falsely suggested that Black voters disapprove of Ms. Harris, whose polling lead with the key voting bloc remains decisive but is not as strong as it was for President Biden during the 2020 election.

“They hate her,” he claimed. “They hate her.”

In the bellwether of Pennsylvania, Erie County is a mini-bellwether. The county has backed the winner of the last four elections.

Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are spending precious time and money in Pennsylvania, where polls have generally shown the vice president ahead.

Mr. Trump’s rally in Erie was his second visit to the western part of the state in six days. Next weekend, he will return to Butler, Pa., the site of the July 13 rally where he was grazed by gunfire in an assassination attempt. His running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, held two events in the state on Saturday.

Ms. Harris campaigned in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, choosing the state for a major address on the economy.