Former Vice‑President Kamala Harris described Joe Biden's decision to seek a second term as "recklessness" in a lengthy excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, saying she felt she was in the "worst position" to counsel him against running and that the White House did not adequately defend or credit her work.

The Atlantic on Wednesday published about 3,000 words from 107 Days, a book whose title references the length of Harris's failed 2020 presidential campaign. In the excerpt, Harris writes, "'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 BBC has contacted Biden's office for comment.

Harris said she did not advise Biden not to run because she believed it would be perceived as "incredibly self‑serving," adding that he would see such counsel as "naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don't let the other guy win." She wrote that Biden's choice to run "should have been more than a personal decision" and that "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."

At several points in the excerpt Harris strikes a balance between criticism and praise. She denied a "big conspiracy" to hide Biden's frailty, calling him "a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president." She also wrote, however, that "at 81, Joe got tired. That's when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles." Harris's account comes after a tumultuous period in which, according to her excerpt, Biden withdrew from the 2024 race following a poor debate performance against then‑Republican candidate Donald Trump. Harris later lost the election to Trump.

Harris also recounts episodes in which she felt marginalized by the Biden team and shortchanged by White House communications. She said her efforts to marshal private investment in Latin America to address root causes of migration were mischaracterized by Republicans as making her the administration's "border czar," and that "no one in the White House [communications] team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved."

She described a trip to Texas in July 2024 after a devastating hurricane, during which she watched a televised address by Biden from a Houston hotel room. "It was a good speech, drawing on the history of the presidency to locate his own place within it," she wrote. "But as my staff later pointed out, it was almost nine minutes into the 11‑minute address before he mentioned me."

Harris and Biden were rivals for the Democratic nomination in 2020 before he selected her as his running mate. Their ticket defeated Donald Trump and Mike Pence that November. Biden launched a re‑election campaign in 2023.

107 Days is scheduled to go on sale on Sept. 23. Harris plans a 15‑city book tour that will include stops in the United Kingdom and Canada. The Atlantic's excerpt is the first extended public portion of the memoir to appear ahead of its publication.