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Kamala Harris, when she was serving as vice president, rejected the Biden campaign’s pressure to celebrate the then-president as the winner of his disastrous debate against Donald Trump, saying she didn’t want to be fed “bulsh–t,” she reported in her new memoir.
“‘JOE BIDEN WON”—all caps, highlighted. ‘He fought through his cold as he is fighting for the American people,’” a sheet of paper containing favorable talking points after then-President Joe Biden’s poor performance on the debate stage, according to Harris’ latest memoir, “107 Days.”
Biden’s poor debate performance against Trump in June 2024 served as the death knell to the campaign that already was coping with mounting public concern that Biden’s mental acuity had cratered and he was unable to serve a second term. Despite the abject failure of a debate performance, Biden’s campaign wanted Harris to deliver favorable assessments of the debate to the American people, according to her book.
“Are you kidding me?” she said ran through her mind as she read the sheet of paper declaring Biden the winner of the night.
She threw the paper back on the table before fielding a call from Biden’s team outlining she was expected to say more of the same as the talking points when joining media interviews.
“No. Don’t feed me bulls–t. Everyone saw what they saw,” Harris continued in the book of what she thought during the call.
The then-vice president said the disastrous debate was littered with Biden missing opportunities to attack Trump, stumbling over his words and losing his train of thought.
“Trump, meanwhile, was using his words like a weapon, but shooting before he aimed, spouting lies, unburdened by the truth,” she wrote. “Biden, striving for accuracy, often stopped midsentence to correct himself, which left him sounding hesitant and garbled. I knew the important policy points he was struggling to convey, and I knew he knew them. He is a master of this material, but that was not coming across at all.”
The Biden campaign suffered a devastating gut punch when Biden delivered a bizarre line on Medicare.
“And then, at the end of a string of convoluted sentences in which he twice confused millions and billions, Joe lost his train of thought entirely, looked disoriented, and blurted out, ‘We finally beat Medicare,’” Harris wrote in her scathing critique of the debate.
“Trump’s reply: ‘Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death,’” Harris continued.
The former vice president described that campaign staffers were tracking reactions to the debate online, with the vast majority describing Biden’s performance as “disaster,” “train wreck” and “embarrassment,” she wrote.
Harris’ husband, attorney Doug Emhoff, faced his own outrage over Biden’s debate performance when left-wing Hollywood director Rob Reiner “screamed” at him during a watch party that democracy was about to be squandered over Biden’s performance.
“Doug, at a watch party with Hollywood donors, was getting an earful. Rob Reiner had screamed at him: ‘We’re going to lose our f—ing democracy and it’s your fault!’” Harris wrote.
As Harris prepared to join CNN in a post-debate interview that was all but guaranteed to focus on Biden’s disastrous performance, she reflected on a joke about a cheating husband, she wrote.
“I couldn’t help but think of the Richard Pryor joke where his wife catches him in bed with another woman. ‘You gonna believe me or your lyin’ eyes?’ he says,” Harris wrote.
Harris said she would not tell voters “that their eyes had lied,” and instead pivoted her talking points to “Trump’s numerous lies.”
“Listen, people can debate on style points, but ultimately this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in the post-debate interview. “Donald Trump lied over and over and over again, as he is wont to do. He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results this November. He went back and forth about where he stands on one of the most critical issues of freedom in America, which is the right of women to make decisions about their own body.”
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Biden’s office declined comment when approached by Fox News Digital Tuesday morning.
Harris’ “107 Days” hit bookshelves Tuesday and recounts the days of her truncated presidential campaign after Biden dropped out of the race July 21, 2024.
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