Vice President Kamala Harris acted like a “courtroom prosecutor” in her insistence that President Joe Biden immediately endorse her for the 2024 Democratic nomination after he abruptly ended his bid for a second term, former first lady Jill Biden writes in her forthcoming memoir.
In “View from the East Wing,” out June 2, Jill Biden recounts the conversation on July 21, 2024, when the 46th president told his second in command he would be the first commander-in-chief not to seek re-election since Lyndon Johnson in 1968.
“Oh my God, Joe. Are you sure?” Jill Biden recalls Harris saying before pushing for her boss’s backing, according to an excerpt reported by USA Today.
When Joe Biden suggested waiting until the next morning to make an endorsement statement, Harris insisted: “I want it sooner.”
After the president said he would call her back “when I figure this out,” the veep pressed: “Could you do it soon? Say, in 20 minutes?”
At that point, Jill Biden writes, she walked out of the room, apparently unable to bear any more.
Joe Biden, the oldest-ever president, endorsed Harris in a separate statement released about half an hour after announcing he was dropping out of the race, forestalling an unprecedented “mini-primary” ahead of the following month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The frosty relationship between Harris, 61, and Jill Biden, 74, has been well documented dating back to a 2019 Democratic primary debate in which Harris attacked Joe Biden over his past opposition to desegregation busing to diversify America’s public schools.
The following week, the future first lady defended her husband on a conference call with supporters, saying in reference to Harris: “With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he’s committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis? Go f–k yourself.”
After Joe Biden secured the Democratic nomination, Jill reportedly came out strongly against choosing Harris as his running mate, complaining: “There are millions of people in the United States. Why do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?”
