Former Vice President Kamala Harris writes that remaining publicly silent about President Joe Biden’s 2024 re‑election bid was “recklessness,” according to an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, 107 Days, published Wednesday by The Atlantic.
Harris, who ran a short presidential campaign last year before withdrawing, said in the excerpt that she now believes the decision to leave Biden’s choice to run solely to him and his wife was a mistake given the stakes. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she wrote, and acknowledged that “perhaps” she should have told Biden to “consider not running.”
Harris described the dilemma she faced: advising Biden against running would have risked appearing to be driven by personal ambition or disloyalty, while saying nothing left the decision in the hands of an individual rather than a broader deliberative process. “Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out,” she wrote. “I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self‑serving if I advised him not to run.”
The excerpt traces how Harris balanced public defense of the president with efforts to distance herself from parts of his record while campaigning. She cited the political fallout from a 2024 appearance on The View, in which she said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” when asked what she would have done differently than Biden — a remark that Republican opponents seized on as evidence that she was too aligned with the president.
Harris also contested characterizations that President Biden was incapacitated, writing, “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.” At the same time, she said she rationalized silence by pointing to the prior election result, telling herself that “the American people had chosen him before in the same matchup,” and that he might reasonably believe he could defeat former President Donald Trump again.
In the memoir excerpt, Harris said she frequently found herself having to prove her loyalty inside the administration. She recounted that, because she had criticized Biden on busing during the 2019 primary, she entered the White House under what she called a “rebuttable presumption,” requiring repeated demonstrations of allegiance. She added that Biden’s inner circle often allowed her to dominate headlines, reasoning that her prominence would dim the president. “Their thinking was zero‑sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed,” she wrote. “None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well.”
Harris argued her visible success as vice president could have assuaged concerns about Biden’s age and served as reassurance that the presidency would be in capable hands if the unexpected occurred. She said the White House rarely defended her when she was criticized or when Republicans portrayed her role in the administration inaccurately, such as labeling her a “border czar.”
During her campaign, Harris sought to distinguish herself from Biden on key issues while defending him publicly. She later told Fox News anchor Bret Baier her presidency would “not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” signaling policy differences on the economy and the Israel‑Hamas war in Gaza.
The release of the excerpt follows a string of books this year that examined the inner workings of the Biden administration. One such title, Original Sin, similarly pulled back the curtain on internal debates and tensions within the White House.
Harris’s memoir is scheduled to hit shelves later this month. In the excerpt, she reflected on the political and personal calculus that shaped her public positions during a fraught period in American politics and acknowledged the competing loyalties she navigated as vice president.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment and did not immediately receive a response.