Harris stops biting her tongue in new book on fight to be president

On Tuesday, US presidential candidate Kamala Harris will release a new book detailing last year’s Democratic campaign to stop Donald Trump reaching the White House. Chris Megerian of the Associated Press reports

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WHEN it was all over, Kamala Harris couldn't believe it.

“I could barely breathe,” she writes in her new book about learning she had lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump.

One of her aides peeled “Madame President” off celebratory cupcakes before serving them to crushed staffers.

Harris kept asking, “My God, my God, what will happen to our country?”

The next morning was no easier.

“I was ashamed to realise I was in the denial and bargaining stages of grief, a very long way from acceptance,” she wrote.

It's one of several raw admissions in Harris’ book, “107 Days,” that is scheduled for release on Tuesday.

The title refers to the length of the hyperspeed campaign that the former vice president launched against Trump after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Although Harris earned a reputation as guarded and circumspect, the book has the tone of someone who is finished biting her tongue. She concedes mistakes, reveals frustrations and details some of the stranger moments from her race.

The book isn’t a winding memoir or a political treatise, and Harris doesn’t disclose any future plans. Instead, it reads like a ticking time bomb, with each chapter counting down to Election Day.

Here’s some memorable moments.

Harris insists in the book that she had no concerns about Biden’s ability to serve as president.

“If I believed that, I would have said so.”

“But at 81, Joe got tired,” Harris wrote. “That's when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”

Harris wrote that Biden's inner circle “should have realised that any campaign was a bridge too far”.

However, “it seemed that the worse things got, the more they pushed him”.

The tenuous situation unravelled when Biden and Trump faced off with each other.

“As soon as he walked onto the debate stage in Atlanta, I could see he wasn't right,” Harris wrote.