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WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Kamala Harris claims Joe Biden “didn’t want” to debate Donald Trump and admitted that he had been “a little off” in the lead-up to his career-ending performance — despite vigorously defending the ex-prez in the fallout.
Harris shared her thoughts on the earliest presidential debate in US history that forced Biden, then 81, to drop his re-election bid during a discussion about her new book on the election, “107 Days,” with YouTube host Steven Bartlett on his show “The Diary of a CEO.”
“He called me from debate camp. The president did, Biden did. And I could tell something was a little off,” she recalled of the days before the June 27, 2024, face-off.
“I don’t think he wanted to debate is my point. He didn’t want that debate,” Harris said — even though the 46th president was first to publicly call for the mono-a-mono showdown in a May 15 post on X that year.
“It’s like any competition,” she added. “If it’s sports, you gotta want it, right? 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. … We had conversations about it.”
Harris, however, never mentioned anything being off when she issued a fiery defense of Biden in a testy interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in the fallout of the disastrous performance.
“Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong,” she hit back when probed if she thought the then-president should step aside.
Biden dropped out of the race a month later, leading to Harris’ nomination.
In the disastrous performance, the Democratic incumbent spoke haltingly in a soft voice, mangled his talking points, and even uttered nonsensical remarks such as, “We finally beat Medicare.”
“I watched that debate very closely for many, many reasons,” Harris recounted. “I was in LA at the Fairmont Hotel watching, watching and taking vigorous notes.”
The former vice president’s sitdown with the podcaster comes after congressional interviews with more than a dozen ex-Biden White House aides and advisers revealed concerns were raised internally about the oldest-ever president’s mental acuity and physical infirmity.
“I do recall the communications team brought forward, led by [Biden senior adviser] Anita [Dunn], the question of whether the President should have a cognitive test when he did his physical,” former White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said in a Sept. 18 transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee.
“There was discussion of, would doing the test help on this perception [of Biden’s age] issue, would it actually hurt because people would say, ‘Well, that’s a very simple test,’” Zients added.
Former deputy chief of staff for policy Bruce Reed also told the Oversight Committee that he “heard” Biden’s personal physician Kevin O’Connor — whom Oversight Republicans referred to the DC Board of Medicine for potential loss of his medical license — dismissed cognitive exams as “meaningless.”
Anita Dunn, one of Biden’s senior advisers, also dished to the Oversight panel that it was “decided that no matter how many tests he took, it would never really quiet the people who were attacking him in an election year on these issues.”
None, however, stated Biden was unfit for office.
Elsewhere in the interview, Bartlett cited portions of Harris’ 2024 election tell-all in which she ripped members of the Biden White House for also “adding fuel to negative narratives that sprung up about me.”
“The president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” she writes in the book.
“I was shocked when I read that,” Harris told Bartlett too, “but at the same time, I understood it because it’s human nature, but also shocked because one wouldn’t expect this and it was counterproductive, was absolutely counterproductive.”
“Did he, Joe Biden, know that that was happening?” asked Bartlett.
“I don’t know if he did, but it’s the staff underneath him that are in charge of that,” she responded.
“You’re saying that you think that they wanted you to be weaker in public perception because that kind of keeps you in your place?” Bartlett pressed.
“I think that that was part of it,” Harris replied. “I do, I think that they decided that, you know, there are far too many people in this world and in professional life who approach things with a zero-sum game.”
Asked whether she remains “friends with Joe Biden” and if their relationship is “good,” Harris answered that the former running-mates had “a good relationship” but “it’s very complicated.”
“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, you know, angered me,” she added.
When pressed whether Biden even “wanted” Harris “to win the election” after he dropped out, the former veep said, “I do, because I was the only one who would be able to preserve his legacy.”
Bartlett noted: “But even that’s about him.”
English (US)