Aides to former President Joe Biden pushed back on excerpts from former Vice President Kamala Harris's forthcoming memoir after an extract published in The Atlantic, calling parts of her account misleading and questioning her depiction of her role in the administration.
In passages from 107 Days, Harris writes she was "in the worst position" to tell Biden that he should consider not running for reelection and that she feared such a conversation would be read as "naked ambition" or "poisonous disloyalty." The memoir, according to the publisher, goes on sale Sept. 23.
Former Biden White House officials who spoke to Axios and other outlets responded sharply to Harris's account, rejecting the suggestion that she lacked opportunity or support to weigh in on the president's political decisions. One former official told Axios that Harris was "simply not good at the job," saying she had "basically zero substantive role in any of the administration's key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was."
Another ex-official questioned Harris's explanation for not urging Biden to step aside, saying the memoir's defense of inaction was not persuasive. A different former aide disputed Harris's contention that the White House did not sufficiently support her, saying several officials had tried to help her succeed but that she and her team did not "seize that support and make the most of it." One former Biden aide invoked Harris's 2024 campaign slogan when assessing her political future: "We're not going back."
Harris's memoir excerpt recounts a period of "growing panic" in which she considered whether she should have urged Biden to reconsider his reelection bid. "Perhaps," she writes. "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." The excerpt also references the 107 days of her own 2024 presidential campaign, which she characterized as too brief to mount a successful effort.
The pushback from Biden aides comes days after the excerpt's publication and signals ongoing tensions among Democratic figures about responsibility and decision-making during the 2024 election cycle. Former officials' comments, as reported to Axios, emphasize internal disagreements over how roles and support were allocated inside the administration and how those dynamics affected subsequent political campaigns.
Biden and Harris served together from 2021 to 2025. Harris's decision to run in 2024 and the duration of her campaign have been subjects of public and political scrutiny since she entered the presidential primary. The memoir marks the latest installment in post-administration accounts by senior officials that revisit strategy, internal debates and the personal calculations that shaped those years.
Representatives for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the aides' criticisms. Aides to Biden have declined to comment beyond the remarks attributed to former staffers in recent media reports.
107 Days will be released Sept. 23, and the Atlantic excerpt has already prompted conversations among Democrats about accountability, messaging and how personal relationships within an administration influence public decision-making. The competing accounts from Harris and former Biden aides underscore continuing disputes over the interpretation of events on and off the campaign trail.