More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. —ALBERTO BRANDOLINI
Nail the big moments and don’t sweat the small speed bumps.
I know how this town works. Information is its most prized capital. What you know and what you’re prepared to trade are the keys to power. Everyone is in this swap meet: politicians, lobbyists, the press.
Throughout my career I’ve maintained that people in positions of power must be required to ask of themselves: Who am I not hearing from? Then make it their business to seek those folks out.
On this day there was a new energy in the room as I walked onto the stage. A Black woman was slated to be the Democratic nominee for president. It was us. And everyone there understood what it meant: that this would be a journey of both joy and pain. I was in a room full of people with whom, because of our shared experience, certain words did not need to be said. There is an emotion that comes from being in a place where people see you, support you, know you. The kindness and the love in that room penetrated the armor I usually wore, armor I’d need to put back on as soon as I left that room.
In my life I’ve seen over and over that it is often the people with the least who give the most.
a noisy group chanted: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We won’t vote for genocide.” The threat to withhold their vote got to me. It felt reckless. Either Trump or I would be elected. The issue was not binary, but the outcome of this election certainly was.
National politics is one thing; family politics can sometimes be just as gnarly.
I am not a trained seal; I’m not going to memorize lines and spout them. I have to understand the logic and building blocks of every argument so I can present it clearly and defend it persuasively.
We also addressed the painful matter of imagining what kinds of personal attacks Trump might mount against me. A man who had no floor, who could go infinitely low, get infinitely cruel. He’d disparaged the war hero Senator John McCain, mocked a reporter’s disability. The gutter was deep for this guy.
When speaking on the campaign trail or facing Trump on the debate stage, the gravity of moments in the Situation Room weighed heavily on my heart and mind. I will never discuss, here or anywhere else, the conversations in that room, the middle-of-the-night calls to gather there, the dramas that unfolded. Unlike the current national security team, we did not hash out our plans on Signal. America’s national security relies heavily on classified information that our adversaries try very hard to acquire. Why make it easy for them? And where is the professionalism, where is the self-discipline?
We are the only country in the world where the leading cause of death for children is guns.
Every country in the world has sick and deranged individuals. Only the United States had eighty-three school shootings in 2024.
I think the true strength of a leader is based not on who you beat down but who you lift up.
Complex answers are often punished by the unforgiving clock.
Donald Trump and I had never met. So when he walked right to his podium, I strode past mine over to him, extended my hand, and introduced myself. It wasn’t a tactic. I always shake hands when I meet someone for the first time. I’d told my prep team I would do it, because it was the natural and polite thing to do. Trump’s eyes widened; he hadn’t expected this. He took my outstretched hand almost deferentially. “Kamala Harris,” I said. “Let’s have a good debate.” In rehearsals, someone suggested saying, “It’s pronounced KAmala.” But at the last minute I decided not to. It felt bitchy. It was the
...more
Donald Trump had won the toss and opted to give the first opening statement. He launched right into his lies about immigrants being rapists and murderers, stealing “Black jobs.” I figured viewers would understand how demeaning and ludicrous that was, since I was right there on the stage, enjoying my Black job as vice president.
Trump’s tariffs, I said, were nothing but a national sales tax that would send prices soaring and would plunge us into a recession by the following summer. I quoted sixteen Nobel laureate economists to back me up. He responded with the absurd claim that I was a Marxist and disparaged my father. I decided not to go on his turf and hoped my smile and raised eyebrow indicated how ridiculous it was. He has a skill for going for the very personal and pulling people into a false reality, forcing them to debate nonsense. Running after his crazy lies was a trap I was determined to avoid.
There is no blue or red, no Democrat or Republican, in the experience of grief and bereavement.
I have adapted to a life in which every move I make outside my own home must be coordinated with my protection detail. Death threats against me have been innumerable. I never talk about the threats or the people who have been prosecuted. Some elected officials speak of these things; I never have. I am not going to be Oh, woe is me. I never carry myself in a way that I feel vulnerable or act vulnerable. But I am acutely aware of it.
“This movement is about reminding each other that we have so much more in common than what separates us… Seeing in the face of a stranger, a neighbor.”
The double standard on our style of presentation was galling. If I hesitated or backtracked midsentence to try to clarify or better express a thought, it was “word salad.” Meanwhile, Trump could describe Hurricane Florence as “one of the wettest we’ve ever seen, from the standpoint of water.”
Few of us know who we will be in a time of crisis until we are tested.
I’ve never believed you need to elevate yourself by pushing someone else down.
Trial lawyers have a saying: There are always three closing arguments. The one you plan to give. The one you give. And the one you should have given.
When pundits talk about rural America, the picture they paint is white. But in the South especially, some rural counties are majority Black, including long-standing farming families who have persevered on the land for generations despite discrimination that began just after Reconstruction and continued right into this century. Black farmers never got their forty acres and a mule, the promised reparation for their years of enslavement and the wealth their stolen labor had created for this country. Worse, they were systematically discriminated against by governments both local and federal. The
...more
I wish I could have gotten the message across that there isn’t a distinction between “they/them” and “you.” The pronoun that matters is “we.” We the people. And that’s who I am for.
Disappointment is a function of unreasonable expectations.
No good public policy can be made with a chain saw.
“There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”
What we the people must understand is that the dismantling of our democracy did not start with the 2024 election. The right-wing and religious nationalists have played the long game, working for decades to take over state houses, gerrymander districts, and dominate local government boards. Their think tanks like the Federalist Society created the blueprint for stacking the Supreme Court, while the Heritage Foundation created Project 2025. Their plans have been amplified by the rise of a right-wing media ecosystem built to operationalize their agenda through massive propaganda, misinformation,
...more
Let us not throw up our hands; let’s roll up our sleeves.
