Kamala Harris’ new memoir, 107 Days, doesn’t just recount her whirlwind 2024 presidential run — it pulls back the curtain on one of the most pivotal and painful moments of the Biden campaign: the first debate against Donald Trump.
In the book, Harris reveals the behind-the-scenes pressure she faced to spin Joe Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate performance as a victory. Campaign aides handed her a sheet of talking points declaring, in bold all-caps, “JOE BIDEN WON,” crediting him with fighting through a cold just as he fought “for the American people.”
Harris, however, wasn’t having it. “Are you kidding me?” she recalled thinking, before tossing the sheet back onto the table. When Biden’s team later called to reinforce the message, her response was blunt: “No. Don’t feed me bulls–t. Everyone saw what they saw.”
Jill Biden tells Joe Biden he did a great job. I mean, how much of a monster is she? Needs to be way more discussed. She’s evil. pic.twitter.com/DrkdWLq4aj
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 28, 2024
What voters saw, Harris writes, was a commander-in-chief stumbling through sentences, missing opportunities to land blows, confusing millions and billions, and finally blurting out the now-infamous line: “We finally beat Medicare.” Trump’s quick retort — “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death” — only sharpened the contrast.
Harris described watching Biden “sound hesitant and garbled” as he repeatedly corrected himself mid-sentence. “He is a master of this material,” she insisted, “but that was not coming across at all.” Meanwhile, Trump “was using his words like a weapon, spouting lies, unburdened by the truth.”
The fallout inside Democratic circles was immediate. Staffers monitoring social media saw Biden’s performance labeled a “disaster,” a “train wreck,” and an “embarrassment.” Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, caught heat in real time at a Hollywood donor watch party, where filmmaker Rob Reiner reportedly screamed: “We’re going to lose our f—ing democracy and it’s your fault!”
As Harris prepared for her post-debate CNN appearance, she reached for a Richard Pryor joke about a cheating husband caught in the act: “You gonna believe me or your lyin’ eyes?” She wasn’t about to tell voters their eyes had lied.
Instead, she pivoted away from Biden’s performance and toward Trump’s falsehoods, warning viewers about January 6, election denialism, and threats to abortion rights.
