Former Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview that former President Joe Biden “greatly disappointed” and “angered” her during her presidential campaign and got in the way of her attempts to beat Donald Trump during the 2024 election.
“I have a great deal of affection for him, and there were times, that I’ve been quite candid about, where he greatly disappointed me and, frankly, angered me,” she said in a “Diary of a CEO” interview, published Thursday.
Harris recounted the moment before her first and only debate with Trump when Biden called her, not with well-wishes, but to make sure she didn’t try to criticize him after allegedly hearing rumors from Pennsylvania that she was “saying bad things about him.”
“I was told that he wanted to call so that I’d be ready. ‘I was so sure it was to buck me up and [say] ‘Go get ‘em,’” Harris said. “When I hung up the phone I was just – it was unbelievable, and I was – yes I was angry, and deeply disappointed. It was so unnecessary.”
A Biden spokesperson did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment. Harris said Biden had called her two days before she recorded the interview to wish her a happy birthday.
Harris, who’s promoting her memoir, “107 Days,” also walked through her belief that Biden never wanted to proceed with his ultimately disatrous debate with Trump, one that led to scores of Democrats turning on his re-election ambitions and eventually caused him to withdraw from the race.
“It’s like any competition you go in, whether it’s you’re bidding for something, if it’s sports – you gotta want it, right?” Harris said. “If you don’t want to be in the competition, it will absolutely have an impact on your performance, and I don’t think he – I’m pretty sure he did not want to debate.”
Harris also remained demure on whether she would run for president again, saying she’s waiting to see if she can “offer something as president of the United States that would be not only uplifting to the American people, but would be about getting us on a correct trajectory.”
You can watch the entire interview here:
