Harris Blasts Biden’s 2024 Run as ‘Reckless’ in New Memoir
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is taking aim at Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election, calling it a reckless mistake in her upcoming memoir 107 Days. In excerpts obtained by The Atlantic, Harris writes she felt she was in “the worst position” to urge Biden to step aside, worried it would seem self-serving even as she feared he couldn’t beat Donald Trump. She writes that Biden’s run was driven more by ego than judgment. “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris said. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she continued. “The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
The comments in Harris’ upcoming book “107 Days” mark her harshest criticism of the Bidens’ circle yet, laying bare divisions in the White House and grappling with the former president’s decision to seek a second term despite widespread concerns over his age.
“During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running?” she wrote. “Perhaps.”Before Biden ultimately dropped out of the race, Harris wrote, she believed that advising him to exit would be viewed by her then-boss “as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty.” She also addressed his age, which polling indicated was a major liability, saying that “at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”
“I don’t believe it was incapacity,” she added. “If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.””And I’m proud to have worked for an administration.
The aftermath of the 2024 presidential election initiated a national conversation about Biden’s age and mental acuity and transparency in politics. After Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July of that year, Harris ultimately failed to win any battleground states.
She announced her new memoir about her monthslong campaign in July. The book is set to be released this month
Biden’s personal office declined to comment on the excerpt, which was published by The Atlantic. Harris ultimately replaced him as the Democratic nominee after he dropped out in 2024, only to lose to Trump in what became the shortest presidential campaign in U.S. history.
