Former President Joe Biden did not want to debate President Donald Trump, former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed.
“He [Biden] called me from debate camp. The president did, Biden did. And I could tell something was a little off,” Harris said to “Diary of a CEO” podcast host Steven Bartlett Thursday, per Fox News. “And I was concerned about… I don’t think he wanted to debate is my point. He didn’t want that debate.”
The debate Harris was referring to was the disastrous showing in June 2024. Biden’s dismal performance ultimately led to him ending his re-election campaign the next month.
Bartlett remarked “it was so apparently clear” something was “not OK” with Biden in the 202.
He then asked Harris why “the Democratic side of politics was pretending everything was OK.”
“You must have known,” Bartlett said.
Harris suggested Biden did not want to participate in the debate.
“You know, it’s like any competition you go in, whether it’s you’re bidding for something, if it’s sports, you got to want it,” she said. “If you don’t want to be in the competition, it will absolutely have an impact on your performance. And I don’t think he, I’m pretty sure he did not want to debate.”
Bartlett then asked Harris how she knew Biden didn’t want to debate and if there was an inkling how poor this performance would actually be.
“Well, we had conversations about it. I think he got talked into it,” Harris said.
“You know, in every debate, I don’t care who you are, there will be statistics wrong or, you know, you name this country, but it was that country. That always happens. There is no such thing as a perfect debate. So there will be something to clean up. And I expected that. And then, you know, we saw what we all saw,” she continued.
Harris also wrote about the debate in her memoir, “107 Days.”
In the book, she detailed her surprise by Biden’s answer regarding his administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, when left 13 U.S. service members died.
Harris said Biden missed an easy question on the military and did not acknowledge the 13 U.S. service members who died.
She also pointed out his assertions he was “the only president this century” and “this decade” who did not have any troops “dying anywhere in the world.”
