On Thursday, Trump stood in front of unused border wall material stacked near the U.S.-Mexico border as he attacked Harris for her stance on illegal immigration. Conducting some counterprogramming ahead of the vice president’s high-profile acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention that evening, Trump claimed Harris, who formerly served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, would be “a Marxist” president.

“She will never build the wall,” Trump declared during his battleground appearance in Arizona. 

While the focus of the former president’s Cochise County visit was on immigration policy, it was his comments to the press about Harris’s California career that caught Newsom’s attention. 

“Look at California. You can’t go into San Francisco. It’s not liveable. Fifteen years ago, it was the best city in the country, one of the best cities in the world. And now, you can’t do anything. Look at what she’s done, and now she’s going to be president, and she’s going to do the exact same thing.”

Newsom reposted a clip on social media of Trump making the pronouncement, with the caption, “The mayor of San Francisco 15 years ago was Gavin Newsom, and the DA was Kamala Harris.”

“Thanks, @realDonaldTrump!!” the California governor joked in a post to X. 

Trump continued his attack on Harris’s record on Thursday, pulling in former San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer to speak at the border event. Kiefer has used her experience of living under Harris’s jurisdiction to warn voters against electing the vice president. 

“Under a program Kamala set up, an illegal alien arrested on drug charges in 2008 was set free to enjoy job training. A short time later, that same illegal alien attacked a 29-year-old beautiful young woman, Amanda Kiefer, stealing her purse and fracturing Amanda’s skull,” Trump recounted before ushering Kiefer to the podium. 

“It was kind of a wake-up moment for me, and I moved out of San Francisco because I didn’t feel safe there,” Kiefer said. “And I don’t think our country is going to be safe under Kamala.” Kiefer was 29 when she was attacked by Alexander Izaguirre. 

Harris admitted there was a “flaw in the design” of her “Back on Track” initiative during an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2009. The program was billed as a “smart on crime” effort intended to reduce rates of recidivism. Criminals who completed the program had their records cleared. 

While Republicans attack Harris’s career, Newsom has jumped to her side, telling Fox News in his latest defense on Thursday that she has “a record of accomplishment.” The two were Democratic colleagues in the Golden State for years before President Joe Biden tapped Harris to be his No. 2.

Once speculated to be a top contender to head the Democratic ticket in 2024, Newsom was quick to endorse Harris after Biden exited the contest. This election cycle, he has had harsh words for Trump, comparing him to Hitler and condemning the former president’s rhetoric on illegal immigration.