In her memoir “107 Days,” former vice president Kamala Harris tears his inner circle by explaining why she postponed it to Joe Biden in her reelection bid.
Kamala Harris from “Late Show with Stephen Colbert”
In an interview about “The Late Show,” Kamala Harris told Stephen Colbert that the system was broken and she wanted to reunite with the Americans.
- Harris writes that she and others in the White House were almost “hypnotized” by the belief that he was the only decision to seek reelection.
- “I think it was reckless,” she says now.
- Harris tears Biden’s inner circle and undermines her public image, she says.
WASHINGTON – Kamala Harris refuses to tell Joe Biden that he shouldn’t run for reelection and now admits it was a huge mistake.
In her memoir, “107 Days,” Harris says it was “recklessness” that drove many people around Biden to postpone the aging president and his wife.
“It’s Joe and Jill’s decision,” we all said, like a mantra, as if we were all hypnotized,” Harris wrote.
“Was it a bounty or reckless? Looking back, I think it was a reckless thing,” writes Harris. “The stakes were simply too high. This was not a choice that should have been left to the individual’s ego, the individual’s ambitions. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
This passage appears in an excerpt from Harris’ upcoming book she shared with the Atlantic ahead of its September 23rd release. In this chapter, the former Democratic candidate rebukes Biden’s team for the way she was treated as vice president before and after dropping out of the 2024 campaign.
The book is a ferocious account of her, a ferocious account of Biden after he dropped out in July 2024, and a campaign that ultimately failed the White House campaign, with his vice president leaving voters with just 107 days of victory.
Harris, who suffered public image during the vice president, accused Biden staff of “added fuel to the negative stories that were born around me,” and she strives and constantly tries to show her loyalty.
She was fighting Biden for a nomination in the 2020 race, but never fully accepted by his inner circle, Harris shows.
“I followed him on the bus in a major debate in 2019, so I came to the White House with what our lawyers call a “refutable presumption.” I had to prove my loyalty over and over again,” she wrote.
Dynamic has contributed to his reluctance to confront Biden, then 81, in his reelection bid, Harris suggests. However, she has come to his defense over allegations that include his mental fitness.
“On his worst days he was deeper and more knowledgeable, able to make judgments and was far more compassionate than Donald Trump. But at 81 Joe was exhausted. That’s when his age showed physical and verbal stumbling,” says Harris.
However, she also claims that Biden has faced hardships throughout his career and has defeated the odds multiple times.
“He was just right about this too,” Harris said.
Why Harris was silent
Harris says he didn’t tell Biden that he should stop the presidential election.
“I was in the worst position to insist he should be dropped,” she wrote. “He would think of it as naked ambition, perhaps toxic unfaithful, even if it was my only message. Don’t beat another man.”
Harris shows he resisted pressure during his campaign to distance himself from Biden for the same reasons.
But she says she would have spoken if she thought Biden wasn’t worthy of serving.
“Many people want to spin a story of a big White House plot in order to hide Joe Biden’s frailty in the White House. Here is the truth I lived in. Joe Biden is a clever man with long experience and deep beliefs, and was able to fulfill his duties as president.”
She praised her performance of a terrifying debate against Trump in June 2024, following a Hollywood fundraiser to jet sets in Europe for seven summits and a group of D-Day commemoratives.
“I don’t think it’s incompetent. If I had believed it, I would have said that. I am as loyal as President Biden, and I am more loyal to my country,” Harris wrote.
One-way loyalty
For all the loyalty he showed to Biden, she says it wasn’t offered in return. At least not from his team, she provides cover to her previous boss while repeatedly pointing fingers.
“From my laughter to the tone of the voice I dated in my 20s, or the tone of the voice I claimed to be “day rentals,” the White House was rarely pushed back on an actual resume,” she wrote.
Harris was elected to San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General before winning a US Senate seat.
She said Lorraine Boles’ Chief of Staff must continually defend her remarks at the White House event, including a simple two-minute introduction to the president, to provide her with absolutely no remarks.
“What’s worse, I’ve learned a lot about the president’s staff adding fuel to the negative stories that were born around me,” she said, claiming she had “unusually high staff sales” in her first year.
Another example said it was the GOP’s efforts to cast her as the “border emperor” when she was in charge of dealing with the root cause of the migration.
“And when the story was unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed to work out with it. Certainly, they seemed as if I had decided that I should be knocked down a little more,” she wrote.
Why Harris believes she was shunned
Harris says he was worried that Biden’s team would overshadow the president, beyond the clashes in the 2020 Democratic primary.
“Their idea was zero-sum. If she was shining, he was dimming. If I did well, he didn’t grasp what he did well,” she said.
Due to concerns about Biden’s age, Harris says her “visible success” was “essential” to how the administration was viewed in the public.
“It would serve as evidence of his judgment in choosing me and the sense of security that the country was in good hands if something happened. My success was important to him,” she wrote.
“His team didn’t get it.”
When polls showed her image was improving, Harris says people around Biden “didn’t like the contrasts that were emerging.”
In response to the extremist group’s October 7 attack, her sharp remarks about Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza and the high death toll among Palestinian civilians were examples.
She disciplined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government in a speech in Selma, Alabama on March 3, 2024.
“It went viral and the West wings became uncomfortable. I was clearly accused of delivering it too well,” she said.
Push around abortion rights to lead a successful intermediate messaging push even when she did the right thing – Harris suggests that she didn’t receive the proper credits.
“There was a big issue here that the president didn’t want to lead. Joe had a hard time talking about reproductive rights in a way that satisfies the gravity of the moment,” she said.
“It was her job on her matters that overturned the narrative that we were destined to mid-term Shellac, and ordered us to lose fewer seats in the House than we expected and maintain control of the Senate.
Biden is responsible
One of the few other jabs Harris filmed for Biden himself is tied to the speech he gave to the country on July 24, 2024, explaining his decision to drop out of the presidential election a few days ago.
Harris made a speech to a black sorority on a previously planned trip to Indiana at the time.
“I saw it that night at the hotel. Finding my place based on the history of the presidency was a good speech. But as my staff later pointed out, it was almost nine minutes to an 11-minute address before he mentioned me,” she said.
And when he did, he spent two sentences thanking her and promoting her qualifications.
“That was it,” she said.
