‘Angry and disappointed’: Kamala Harris critical of Joe Biden in new book

Kamala Harris has never been shy about telling her version of events, and now she’s putting them into a campaign memoir titled 107 Days. The book, obtained in advance of publication, pulls back the curtain on her fraught relationship with Joe Biden, her onetime boss and later reluctant supporter. What emerges is a portrait of a White House riddled with internal tensions, insecurities, and mistrust—hardly the picture of steady leadership that Democrats have long tried to project.

Harris describes one episode in particular, on the eve of a pivotal debate against Donald Trump, that left her both “angry and disappointed.” According to Harris, Joe Biden phoned her in Philadelphia hours before she stepped onto the stage. Rather than offering encouragement, he warned her about “power brokers in Philly” who, he said, were refusing to support her because she had said “bad things” about him. Harris writes that Biden explained his brother had relayed this information from influential contacts. “Then he got to his point. His brother had told him that those guys were not going to support me because I’d been saying bad things about him. He wasn’t inclined to believe it, he claimed, but he thought I should know in case my team had been encouraging me to put daylight between the two of us.”

Instead of focusing on Harris’s uphill task against Trump, Biden turned the conversation back to himself, insisting that his own debate missteps months earlier weren’t as bad as they seemed. “Joe then rattled on about his own former debate performances. ‘I beat him the other time; I wasn’t feeling well in that last one.’ He continued to insist that his debate performance hadn’t hurt him much with the electorate. I was barely listening,” Harris recalls.

Her frustration was obvious: “I just couldn’t understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself. Distracting me with worry about hostile power-brokers in the biggest city of the most important state.” Her husband, Doug Emhoff, urged her to brush it off: “‘Let it go,’ he said. He knew I had to redirect my focus. ‘Don’t worry about him. You’re dealing with Trump. Let it go.’”

The book makes clear that Harris long felt sidelined by the Biden circle. She points out that when Roe v. Wade was overturned, “Joe struggled to talk about reproductive rights in a way that met the gravity of the moment.” She also notes her concerns about his ability to campaign effectively, writing: “His voice was no longer strong, his verbal stumbles more frequent.”

The tension boiled over during a July 4th meeting as Biden faced mounting calls to step aside. Harris recalls hugging him and realizing “he felt so frail.” Emhoff, meanwhile, was confronted by Jill Biden, who pressed him on whether Harris was still loyal. “She seemed tense, even angry. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded. ‘Are you supporting us?’ Of course, Doug said. Of course we are supporting you. ‘OK. That’s really important. We need to know that.’”

Emhoff later vented: “‘They hide you away for four years, give you impossible, shit jobs, don’t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterised, never fight back when you’re attacked, never praise your accomplishments, and now, finally, they want you out there on that balcony, standing right beside them. Now, finally, they know you are an asset, and they need you to reassure the American people. And still, they have to ask if we’re loyal?’”

Harris admits she shared his frustrations. She even recalls being criticized for giving a speech “too well,” as Biden’s team feared her success made him look diminished. “Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed.”

Biden eventually bowed out in July and endorsed Harris, though not before advisers bluntly told her: “People hate Joe Biden.” Harris confesses, “It was hard for me to hear that.” Yet the admission reflects what voters already sensed: a president too frail to continue, surrounded by handlers more concerned with loyalty tests and optics than with competence or results.

The book also touches on Trump’s pointed attacks, including a remark about her background that lit up the media. Harris told aide Brian Fallon she wouldn’t take the bait, adding sarcastically, “‘Today he wants me to prove my race. What next? He’ll say I’m not a woman and I’ll need to show my vagina?’ Brian, on the other end of the phone, fell silent. I imagined the deep crimson of his blush.”

For conservatives, what this memoir really exposes is the dysfunction at the top of the Democratic Party. Harris portrays Biden as distracted, insecure, and physically frail. She depicts a White House where power struggles mattered more than policy, where public unity masked private chaos, and where Americans were left to wonder who was really steering the ship. As the nation faced inflation, global instability, and eroding trust in institutions, the leaders tasked with solving those problems were busy questioning each other’s loyalty and nursing personal grievances.