Former Biden Aides Are Furious About Harris' Book

Former Joe Biden aides speaking to Axios and Politico on condition of anonymity are furious about an excerpt from Kamala Harris' upcoming memoir 107 Days that was published this week. She said it was "recklessness" to leave Biden's decision to run for reelection up to Joe and Jill Biden alone, writing that it wasn't "a choice that should have been left to an individual's ego, an individual's ambition." Politico's sources say the former vice president called the former president Tuesday to warn him about the release of the excerpt.

• Some of the former aides accused Harris of blaming Biden for her own failures. As vice president, she "was simply not good at the job," one former White House official told Axios. "She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration's key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was."
• Another former aide said, "On the border stuff in particular I'd also say, if she had spent a fraction of the time and energy doing the work that she did on complaining, about how she was perceived, she would have been perceived a whole lot better."
• "No one wants to hear your pity party," another former aide told Politico.

• Other former aides said the remarks were too little, too late. "I hate that we're beating up on a man struggling with cancer, and [who] did genuinely serve our country pretty damn well, even if he made a critical error at the end," a former Biden and Harris campaign aide told Politico. "But maybe what is even more painful is we needed more of this distinction and acknowledgement during the campaign."
• Another former aide told Axios that Harris' complaint about how she was treated by Biden's inner circle was justified. "We all know that the Biden folks treated her and her team like s---. We never thought she would actually say anything," the aide said. "The staffers across a range of ages and positions that I'm talking to are proud of her."