Kamala: Selfish Biden Tried to Kneecap Me Before My Trump Debate

Terrorists in Michigan? Senate Democrats throwing poor people under the bus to win friends and influence voters in Virginia and New Jersey? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Maduro? What a Friday, eh?

Take heart — the news isn’t all depressing. In more pleasant news, Kamala Harris’ Why Didn’t You B*****ds Vote For Me tour continues apace, with the usual blame-shifting that we’ve come to expect. Today, Tommy Christopher at Mediaite highlights this exchange between Harris and podcast host Steven Bartlett while discussing her campaign memoir 107 Days. Bartlett asked her about a claim in her book that Joe Biden rattled her just before her one debate with Donald Trump, which Harris now claims as evidence that Biden tried to sabotage her.

No, really.

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— Tommy moderna-vaX-Topher (@tommyxtopher) October 31, 2025

Former Vice President Kamala Harris told podcast host Steven Bartlett that she was “angry” after a phone call from then-President Joe Biden just before she was about to debate soon-to-be-President Donald Trump, attacking Biden for showing he was “all about himself.” …

VP Harris revealed that the call colored her opinion of the president, and even said she believed his desire for her to win was self-serving[.]

Tommy also provides a transcript, which I’ll excerpt in part:

STEVEN BARTLETT: You took something from that. You took an underlying message about one’s intentions from that, because I would. If someone called me in the lead up to debate prep and said something like that to me, I would assume that they don’t want the best for me.

EX-VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: My takeaway is his motivation was all about himself.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s what I would assume from that.

EX-VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Obviously, right. Yeah. It wasn’t about my performance at the debate.

Ahem. If Merriam-Webster put an illustration on its entry for the word ingrate, we would expect to see a wood-cut drawing of Joy McBratsummer right next to it. Harris got the nomination entirely through Biden’s beneficence. She wouldn’t have been the VP in the first place without Biden’s choice to bring her onto the ticket, despite accusing him of being a racist in the first 2019 primary debate. Harris would still be a Senate backbencher of little consequence, especially after flaming out as badly as she did in that cycle. 

Furthermore, Biden went out of his way to ensure she got anointed as his replacement when he withdrew his nomination for the 2024 general election. Biden’s fast endorsement of Harris short-circuited the chance for Democrats to open up the convention and have a real competition for the nomination, after having rigged their primaries to prevent Biden from facing any real competition. Biden’s public demand that Harris take the nomination cut off all plans to run a three-week competition among leading Democrat lights, a competition that Harris would almost certainly have lost the moment she started speaking publicly. 

This gripe also ignores the context of Harris’ campaigning in a political environment where the Biden/Harris administration had grown unpopular with voters. Harris kept blowing chances to distance herself from Biden’s policies, but her campaign and allies kept trying to find ways to claim that Harris would be her own woman as president. That necessitated some changes in rhetoric if not policy. The Bidens were too sensitive about this issue, but were also sore about getting pushed out of the nomination (or so they saw it) in the wake of the disastrous debate. Biden still thinks to this day that a robust defense of his policies and agenda would have won the election — he’s delusional, but he’s still convinced — and he wanted Harris to stick to that line and keep her surrogates from criticizing him. 

Was the call poorly timed? Yes. Was it selfish? At least in part, sure, but Biden was absolutely convinced that he was the only Trump Beater in the party, and that he knew how to go after him a debate, too. Biden had done two with Trump four years ago and fared decently in one-and-a-half of them. He sundowned in the last half of the final 2020 debate, but at least survived it, unlike the June 2024 debate. He may have wanted to impress upon her the need to stay the course while fighting Trump on stage. 

But even if he just called to gripe … so what? Harris wouldn’t have had the opportunity at all without Biden. If a gripe from your boss throws you that much before a debate, that speaks to Harris’ lack of a leadership temperament. Presidents face much graver crises than snippiness from a senile mentor, for Pete’s sake. What a whiner.

And that, of course, reminds us that Harris still wants to pursue a political career, at least reportedly. She’s certainly not making the case for it with this book and tour, which sounds more and more like it could be titled Listen To Me Tell You How You All Failed Me. Maybe she can turn this into a symposium with Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, with guest appearances by John Kerry and Al Gore. 

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