Former Vice President Kamala Harris is taking direct aim at former President Joe Biden in her forthcoming memoir, "107 Days," obtained by The Atlantic on Wednesday. Harris condemns Biden’s decision to seek a second term as an act of “recklessness” driven by his ego, pointing many fingers at her former boss.
“Was it grace, or was it recklessness?" Harris asked herself in the book about her decision to let Biden run again. "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 continued.
Harris is no doubt trying to deflect blame from her extremely poor performance during her brief run for the presidency, spending a record amount of money and yet not winning a single swing state.
However, she doubled down on her decision, taking solace in the fact that “the American people had chosen him before in the same matchup,” and that “it was just possible he was right about this, too.”
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. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.
Harris went on to further state that she had a "delicate status" at the White House, and blamed the former president for adding "fuel" to negative narratives about her, which were pushed by critics, according to the NY Post. She argued that when she was “attacked...on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a ‘DEI hire,’ the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé.”
“They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible," she continued. “Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me.”
Harris suggested that the reason the Biden administration wouldn't defend her was some sort of foul play. She noted that as polls showed her popularity gaining on Biden's, they let the negative narratives about her go unchecked. “Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital,” her memoir read.
“It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him," she wrote. “His team didn’t get it.”
On Biden's cognitive decline, Harris said that she didn't chime in because she was a "loyal person." She also argued that there wasn't any big conspiracy to cover it up.
Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president. On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best.
But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser.
“I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,” she concluded.