‘It was recklessness’: Kamala Harris on Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election bid, says White House never defended her in new book

In an explosive new book, former US Vice President Kamala Harris said former US President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election bid was “recklessness”. She said she perhaps should have told him not to run but she was, within the White House, in the worst position to tell him that. Harris said that when a section of the US media constantly targeted her, White House rarely pushed her actual credentials.

In the book ‘107 Days’ by Kamala Harris, published by Simon & Schuster, the former V-P said, “During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running? Perhaps. But the American people had chosen him before in the same matchup. Maybe he was right to believe that they would do so again.”

Harris said Biden was by some measures the “most consistently underestimated man in Washington”. He had been right in his tactics for pushing his agenda through Congress and it was possible he was right by his re-election bid too, she said.

“And of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run,” said Harris, adding her decision would have been seen as naked ambition and poisonous disloyalty.

““It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.” We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. 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,” she added.

Despite many trying to spin the narrative of a big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity, he was a “smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president”. She acknowledged in the book that at 81, Joe Biden got tired. She said his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles, and the debate debacle happened right after back-to-back trips to Europe and the West Coast.

She said if she believed it was “incapacity”, she would have said so. “As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,” said Harris.

Harris said that it was a lore in the White House that every outgoing chief of staff always tells the incoming president’s chief of staff to “watch the VP” – that’s Rule No. 1. She said she came into the White House with a “rebuttable presumption” and had to prove her loyalty time and time again.

The former V-P said when Fox News attacked her for her laugh or tone of voice or who she dated when she was 20 or called her a ‘DEI hire’, the White House rarely pushed her back with her actual resume – two terms elected DA, top cop, and a senator.

Harris said her chief of staff had to constantly fight to get her to stand and talk at events. The White House had a huge communications team but to get them to say anything positive about her work or defend her against untrue attacks was “almost impossible”, said Harris.