Harris Rebuts Biden Campaign Talking Points After Debacle Debate, Memoir Claims
In 107 Days, Kamala Harris recounts tossing back a 'JOE BIDEN WON' sheet and rejecting campaign pressure to frame the debate as a win.
Kamala Harris reveals in her new memoir that she refused to echo campaign talking points that framed Joe Biden as the winner of his disastrous debate against Donald Trump. The account, offered in 107 Days, describes a moment after the June 2024 showdown in which a sheet of favorable talking points—marked in all caps with “JOE BIDEN WON”—was laid on the table. Harris says she tossed the sheet back and dismissed the message, telling aides that she wouldn’t feed her team a narrative she hadn’t seen reflected in the public record. “Are you kidding me?” she writes she thought as she read the line, a moment she says underscored the gulf between perception and what occurred on the stage.
The memoir portrays Biden’s performance as flawed, with Harris detailing how she watched a campaign that had already faced concerns about Biden’s stamina and mental acuity grapple with how to respond. She writes that Biden “fought through his cold as he is fighting for the American people,” but she also notes that the former president “missed opportunities to attack Trump,” often stumbling over words and trailing off midsentence. The narrative adds that campaign staff were monitoring social-media reactions in real time, and the early online consensus labeled the performance a disaster, a train wreck, and an embarrassment.
Harris recounts a tense post-debate moment when the Biden team pressed her to participate in interviews with the same line of argument, asking her to repeat talking points. She says she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that, while style points could be debated, the election should be about substance. In the book, she quotes Biden as saying the campaign needed to emphasize that Trump had lied repeatedly and wouldn’t disavow January 6, and she describes pivoting to a contrast between Trump’s rhetoric and the need to focus on policy substance. She writes that Biden’s infamous quip about Medicare—“We finally beat Medicare”—elicited a quick, sarcastic response from Trump: “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.” The line, she writes, underscored for her how a single moment can shape the public memory of a candidate’s competence.
The memoir also touches on the personal side of the moment, including tensions within Biden’s inner circle and the reaction of Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff. Harris recounts that Rob Reiner confronted Emhoff at a watch party with left-wing frustration, telling him that democracy could be squandered if Biden’s performance did not recover. She recalls turning to a joke about a cheating husband as she considered how to frame her own outreach after the debate, ultimately deciding that she wouldn’t tell voters that their eyes had lied to them. Instead, she chose to emphasize Trump’s “numerous lies” and the broader issues at stake in the election.
The chapter also sheds light on the campaign’s internal dynamics during the days following the debate. Harris writes that she faced a choice about whether to align with a narrative that would place blame or to push for a more durable critique of Trump’s record and rhetoric. She quotes herself telling CNN that the election must be decided on policy outcomes and governance, not merely on style or spectacle. The passage adds context to the broader debate about how the Biden-Harris team tried to recalibrate its messaging after a performance many outlets described as a setback.
107 Days, which hits shelves this week, chronicles the period after Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race on July 21, 2024, and the way that event reshaped Harris’s own campaign path. The book situates the debate within a turning point for the 2024 cycle and reflects on how both campaigns sought to respond to concerns about leadership and capability amid an unsettled national mood. Harris’s reflections come as the political conversation continues to grapple with questions of competence, trust, and the ability to lead in difficult moments.
Biden’s office declined to comment when approached by Fox News Digital about the memoir’s claims. The book’s release adds a fresh, first-person dimension to a moment that had already defined the early phase of the post-debate period and the broader 2024 race. Harris’s perspective, as laid out in 107 Days, offers a window into the internal dynamics of a ticket facing persistent questions about age, stamina, and the ability to rally support after a stumble on the debate stage.
