Former Vice President Kamala Harris admits that former President Joe Biden got ‘tired’ while in office, but she insists there was no ‘big conspiracy’ to cover up his decline.
Harris made the claims in a newly released excerpt from her upcoming book, ‘107 Days,’ which details her experience running for president with frequent throwbacks to her time as number two in the White House. The excerpt, published by The Atlantic, focuses on her relationship with Biden and her frustration with how she was treated in the Biden-Harris administration.
‘Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president,’ Harris wrote. ‘On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired.’
‘That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser. 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,’ she added.
Harris went on to complain that Biden’s staff didn’t give her the support she felt was necessary as vice president, on issues from foreign policy to illegal immigration.
She complained that getting the White House press office, including then-press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, to defend her was ‘almost impossible.’
‘Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me. One narrative that took a stubborn hold was that I had a ‘chaotic’ office and unusually high staff turnover during my first year,’ Harris wrote, going on to say that some people just can’t hack it in a White House role.
‘Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,’ she added regarding Biden’s staff. ‘That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him.
The former vice president also said Democrats across the board should have been more aggressive in pushing Biden not to run, saying it was ‘reckless’ to leave the decision in his hands for so long.
”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 stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,’ Harris wrote.