Former Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that she was taking a break from political office after decades, telling Stephen Colbert, the host of “The Late Show,” that the American political system was broken.
Ms. Harris told Mr. Colbert that she wanted to travel the country to talk to Americans as a private citizen. It was her first interview since she left office on Jan. 20 after losing the election to Donald J. Trump.
The interview came days after she announced she would not run in the California governor’s race next year. Ms. Harris, who was California’s attorney general and also represented it in the U.S. Senate, had been exploring a run for the state’s top office after returning home to Los Angeles in January.
She also discussed what would be in “107 Days,” her upcoming memoir about her experience running for president last year that she had announced hours earlier. She said it would talk about how intense and short the campaign was after President Biden abruptly stepped down as the Democratic nominee last summer, leaving her less than four months to campaign.
Mr. Colbert asked her if the reason she wouldn’t run in California was because she was going to run for a different office. She said no.
“For now, I don’t want to go back in the system,” she said. “I want to travel the country, I want to listen to people, I want to talk with people, and I don’t want it to be transactional, where I’m asking for their vote.”
Mr. Colbert said that it was harrowing to hear from Ms. Harris that the American system was broken.
“Well, but it’s also evident, isn’t it?” she said. “But it doesn’t mean we give up.”
Ms. Harris said that she and her husband, Doug Emhoff, had tuned out the news for months after her she left office, joking that she was “just not into self-mutilation.” She said that she had watched cooking shows instead.
For people who felt deflated and despondent, she said it was important that people like her “remind them of their power and their importance in making a difference.”
Ms. Harris also said that she hoped that her book, to be released on Sept. 23, would inspire readers to see themselves in the political process and recognize their potential.
“I hope, by writing this book, one of the things that I do is help people see from the inside what it is in a way that they can see something about themselves that tells them, ‘Hey, I could do that,’” she said.
She also said the memoir would discuss the challenges of setting herself apart from Mr. Biden, declining to speak at length about him in the interview. She also said that she would have liked to do some things differently in the campaign, without detailing how.
She mentioned some anecdotes that would be included in the memoir, including a moment when Mr. Emhoff “dropped the ball” on her birthday, a month before the election. She also recalled the day former President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, endorsing her.
Mr. Colbert showed a photograph of her from that day that had not been shown in public before and would be included in the book. It showed her in the dining room at the vice president’s residence, she said, shortly after she had brunch with her family who had visited, including her niece’s children.
“And I get the call from Joe,” she said. Then she and her team “turned it into a war room,” making more than a hundred calls that day, she added.
When Mr. Colbert asked her if she would like to tell Americans “I told you so” about what Trump would do in office, she said that “I did predict a lot of it,” and added, “What I did not predict was the capitulation.”
Before concluding the interview, Mr. Colbert asked Ms. Harris who was leading the Democratic Party. The party stands deeply fractured as it workshops new tactics after its losses in 2024.
“I think it is a mistake for us who want to figure out how to get out and through this,” she said, “to put it on the shoulders on any one person: It’s really on all of our shoulders.”
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
The post Kamala Harris Tells Colbert She Wants a Break From Public Office appeared first on New York Times.
