Kamala Harris has unleashed a scathing critique of Joe Biden’s failed 2024 reelection bid, blasting it as “recklessness at the highest level,” in explosive excerpts from her forthcoming memoir released Wednesday.
The former vice president, who stepped in as the Democratic nominee after Biden bowed out, only to lose to Donald Trump, paints a damning portrait of an ageing president and a White House mired in denial.
In her memoir, 107 Days, previewed by The Atlantic, Harris writes that the then-81-year-old Biden grew visibly weary, with “physical and verbal stumbles” that made his age impossible to ignore.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotised,” Harris recalled. “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.”
Biden dropped out of the race in July 2024 after a disastrous debate with Trump intensified concerns about his mental sharpness and stamina. Harris denied any deliberate cover-up but admitted Biden’s decline was plain.
“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best,” she wrote. “But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed.”
Harris also accused Biden’s inner circle of sidelining her as vice president, claiming they allowed negative narratives to fester rather than risk her eclipsing the president.
“When the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” she charged.
She further revealed she had been left to carry the burden of Biden’s unpopular border policy, which Trump ruthlessly exploited on the campaign trail.
Harris’s own presidential run lasted a mere 107 days, the shortest in modern American history, a period that now lends its name to her memoir
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