Kamala Harris Does a Complete 180 From Defending Biden to Ripping His Ego in Memoir

Former Vice President Kamala Harris performed a striking pivot from her full-throated defense of former President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign to now, in a new memoir, declaring it utter “recklessness” for the Democratic Party to have been steered by Biden’s “ego” and “ambition.”

In a newly published excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, 107 Days, Harris claims that she and others in the party were “hypnotized” by Joe and Jill Biden’s insistence that he should run again.

Yet Harris also portrays herself as trapped, laying out her sense of paralysis on the issue at the time. She writes that she “knew” that telling Biden he “should drop out” would have been seen as “naked ambition” or “poisonous disloyalty.” In other words, she now suggests she understood she might have been in a position to tell him not to run, but balked at the consequences.

That retrospective candor stands in stark contrast to her public posture during the campaign, when no such reservations were on display.

Harris’s account of the internal atmosphere in the White House collides directly with her repeated public backing of Biden’s bid for a second term, even after it was widely assumed he would serve only one.

After Biden announced he would seek re-election with Harris at his side, she praised the decision:

Her defense only hardened as Biden came under mounting scrutiny over his age and acuity.

In February 2024, as Biden pressed ahead with his campaign, Harris was one of his most forceful defenders in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on his handling of classified documents. Hur, who interviewed the president at length, described Biden’s memory as “poor” and marked by “significant limitations.” Harris hit back, Axios reported at the time, dismissing the characterisation as “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.”

That pattern held through the summer as concerns over Biden’s fitness reached their peak.

In 107 Days, Harris addresses Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024 — the “debate debacle,” as she now frames it. While denying that his performance was the result of “incapacity,” she concedes he “got tired” because of his schedule.

But in public, she was unwavering. After the debate, she insisted to CNN and MSNBC that Biden had enjoyed a “good and strong finish,” brushing aside Democratic backlash.

“On substance, on policy, on performance, Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong,” Harris told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who pushed back that many supporters considered the showing “disastrous.”

Days later, Harris again defended the ticket, telling CBS News: “I am proud to be Joe Biden’s running mate.”

Even after Biden stepped aside on July 21, 2024, and Harris assumed the top of the ticket, she continued to insist he was “capable in every way.” In an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson, she doubled down — prompting a confused follow-up on why Biden was not, then, the one running for office.

Now, as Harris seeks to define her own legacy beyond the Biden era, she is moving in the opposite direction – disavowing the very campaign she once defended most fiercely.