Kamala Harris on Tuesday downplayed tension with fellow Democrats while accepting some blame for her 2024 election defeat, as the former vice president’s account of her abbreviated 15-week-long presidential campaign hits shelves.
Harris’ memoir, titled “107 Days,” is so rife with criticism for prominent Democrats such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former President Joe Biden that strategists opined it could represent a swansong from politics.
But in a Tuesday interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Harris appeared keen to turn attention away from her squabbles with members of her own party and instead focus squarely on the man who beat her in the 2024 election: President Donald Trump.
“Part of the reason that I have written this book is for us to remember that there is somebody in the White House right now that made a whole lot of promises, that were either about what would aggrandize and help him mete out his vengeance, or about lies he told to the American people that he obviously never intended to keep,” she said.
And she’s keeping her options open about potentially entering the 2028 election, saying Tuesday that “I’m not focused on that right now, I’m really not.”
In the book, Harris detailed the process by which she chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, lobbing thinly veiled jabs at several of the top Democrats who participated in the selection process. As excerpts of the book made the rounds in recent weeks, the Democrats Harris impugned have pushed back with force.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a fellow 2028 contender passed over by Harris because she believed “it was too big of a risk” for a Black woman to run with a gay man, told POLITICO he was surprised by her admission and believes in “giving Americans more credit.” A spokesperson for Shapiro, who Harris fretted was too ambitious for the VP slot, told POLITICO last week that it was “simply ridiculous to suggest that Governor Shapiro was focused on anything other than defeating Donald Trump and protecting Pennsylvania from the chaos we are living through now.”
Harris, who ruled out a run for California governor in July, on Tuesday gave ABC’s Michael Strahan a rosy assessment of the Democratic Party’s electoral bench — and said she wasn’t trying to settle any scores in her party.
When asked if the book may have burned some bridges between her and other Democrats, she responded “No, and that’s not my intention, and I hope not.”
“We have nothing but stars, as far as I’m concerned, in the party,” she continued. “And I talk glowingly about who they are and what they are contributing. And frankly, I think that part of the problem that we have right now in terms of the punditry is to suggest that we are waiting for a messiah and the savior, and the saving message, instead of seeing that we actually have a lot of stars who are doing very good work.”
Harris’ appearance on “Good Morning America” is one of several stops she is taking in a media tour to promote her book. Harris sat down with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview Monday, during which she accepted part of the blame for not effectively pressuring Biden to refrain from seeking reelection.
She’ll also appear on “The View” on Tuesday, the program Harris highlighted in her book when describing her own failure to effectively separate herself from the unpopular Biden administration. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said in October 2024 when asked if there was anything she would have done differently from Biden over their four years in the White House.
Harris’ book painted a complicated relationship between her and her onetime boss, describing what she called a productive relationship but also unleashing criticism on his inner circle and his decision to run for office again.
But Harris on Tuesday pivoted to her role in processing the peaceful transition of power to Trump when Strahan asked for her thoughts on Biden’s insistence that he would have won the election had he stayed in. And she accepted the ultimate blame for her loss.
“As I say many times in different ways in the book, the buck stopped with me,” she said. “And I’m clear about that. I’m clear about that. And there were so many factors.”
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