107 Days

by Kamala Harris

The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. —ALBERTO BRANDOLINI I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA …. I was born like this. —KENDRICK LAMAR, “DNA”

When Doug and I arrived at the White House on July 4, I greeted Joe with our usual hug. He felt so frail. One of the staff drew Doug aside. The First Lady wanted to speak with him. He was led to the Blue Room, where Jill Biden was standing alone. She seemed tense, even angry. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Are you supporting us?” Of course, Doug said. Of course we are supporting you. “Okay. That’s really important. We need to know that.” When I joined him, Doug was wearing a grim expression. Doug runs cool. He’s slow to anger. But I could tell something had gotten to him. Later, he unloaded. “They hide you away for four years, give you impossible, shit jobs, don’t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterized, never fight back when you’re attacked, never praise your accomplishments, and now, finally, they want you out there on that balcony, standing right beside them. Now, finally, they know you are an asset, and they need you to reassure the American people. “And still, they have to ask if we’re loyal?”

Netanyahu’s hooded gaze and disengaged demeanor made it clear to me that he was running out the clock. He denied Gazans were starving and blamed Hamas for looting food. I interrupted to reiterate the need for an immediate ceasefire and a day-after plan that gave Palestinians some kind of political horizon. Netanyahu wanted only a temporary ceasefire to get hostages back but did not want to end the war. It was clear that nothing would be accomplished. We’d outlined the terms of negotiation for the ceasefire back in May and made frustratingly little progress with either Israel or Hamas. Netanyahu was bent on undermining Joe Biden, one of Israel’s staunchest allies. I had pleaded with Joe, when he spoke publicly on this issue, to extend the same empathy he showed to the suffering of Ukrainians to the suffering of innocent Gazan civilians. But he couldn’t do it: while he could passionately state, “I am a Zionist,” his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced. That loyalty meant nothing to Netanyahu. He wanted Trump in the seat opposite him. Not Joe, not me. Netanyahu wanted the guy who would acquiesce to his every extreme proposal for the future of Gaza’s inhabitants and add his own plan for a land grab by his developer cronies.

For any enduring peace, we have to let go of extreme rhetoric on both sides. The war in Gaza is not a binary issue, but too often the conversation about it is. I wanted to acknowledge the complexity, nuance, and history of the region, but it seemed very few people had the appetite for that or the willingness to hold two tragic narratives in their mind at the same time, to grieve for human suffering both Israeli and Palestinian. Loud voices on either side claimed there were no innocents on the other, a position I found inhuman. And I know Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who was tirelessly hauling himself from Jerusalem to Doha to DC, sincerely wanted to end the suffering on all sides.

I was born amid dissent. Civil rights were won through protest. My parents took me to demonstrations when I was still in my stroller. The people at my rallies had every right to do what they were doing. I understood them, I understood why they were angry. Usually, the crowd drowned them out, and I went on with the business of my speech. But at a rally in Detroit, as I was detailing Trump’s threats to climate policy and the Affordable Care Act, 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. “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Why weren’t they protesting at Trump rallies? I wondered. I wished they would understand that sitting out the election or voting for a third candidate would elect Trump and kill any effort for a just peace, any hope for a two-state solution.

I wrapped up that unproductive meeting with Netanyahu in under an hour and walked out to address the press. I sincerely reaffirmed my commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself. I added that how Israel did that mattered. I said that Hamas triggered the war when it massacred 1,200 innocent people and committed horrific acts of sexual violence. I listed by name the five American hostages still living and the three whose remains were still held by Hamas. Then I told the press that I had discussed with the prime minister the dire situation of innocent civilians in Gaza. I described the agonizing “images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.” I said, “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.”

I was running to be president, not to be an American history professor. It wasn’t my duty to school the former president on America’s racial history—the one-drop rule; the one-eighth law—and how this history had been, and still is, weaponized. When my mother came alone to this country from India as a nineteen-year-old student in 1958, there were still very few South Asians in the United States. She knew that with a Black Jamaican-born father, Americans would see us as Black children. She raised Maya and me to be proud Black women. I could hear my mother’s stern voice: “Kamala, don’t ever let anyone tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.” On the plane that day when I first heard about Trump’s remark, we patched in Brian Fallon from DC on a call to strategize a response. Brian wanted me to punch back with a big speech about my racial identity, like the one Obama had given. I was so pissed that I didn’t hold back. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I was not about to take Trump’s bait. He lies all the time, I told Brian. He throws out outrageous statements to distract from the real issues. “Today he wants me to prove my race. What next? He’ll say I’m not a woman and I’ll need to show my vagina?” Brian, on the other end of the phone, fell silent. I imagined the deep crimson of his blush.

Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan were on the move. The complex diplomatic effort that spanned six countries and involved the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War was forged of international friendships, the tattered relationships that Joe Biden and I had painstakingly mended after Trump had shredded them in his first term. This result was a product of exactly the kind of skilled diplomacy that Trump and Vance, in their deep and willful ignorance, scorned. Evan and Paul were out of prison, along with fourteen other political prisoners. With the Russians there was always the risk of a last-minute hitch, so we waited anxiously until we had news they were in safe airspace, in flight to Turkey. From there, they’d be flown home to America. Joe Biden had the happy task of alerting their next of kin.

Trump had been saying he’d decide about debating me once I’d clinched the nomination. Sure enough, he released a statement on his Truth Social platform. It was classic Trump. Yes, he would debate me. But he’d reneged on the agreement negotiated for that debate. According to him, it would now be on September 4, not 10; it would be on Fox News, not ABC; and “the Rules will be similar to the Rules of my Debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his Party – BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!” I’m sure his team leaned on him to keep the rule that mics would be silenced during the other debater’s time. That was the one rule I wanted changed. I knew I could handle his disruptive asides, and I wanted viewers to see and hear how undisciplined and bullying he could be. His team knew that his crazy ranting didn’t play well, so they’d kept that requirement in place. The wording of his statement made it sound as if I’d agreed to all the other changes. Nope. We could sense an air of panic in the Trump campaign. That day we’d announced that we’d taken in $310 million in the last month alone, more than double his donations over the same period. So we decided to punch back hard. I responded that I would be in the ABC studio on September 10 whether he was there or not and would be glad to use the ninety minutes of airtime exclusively.

I got into my motorcade, but we weren’t pulling out. I asked Max why we weren’t leaving. That was when I learned we were being held up by J. D. Vance. He was out of his car and walking toward Air Force Two, in violation of every rule of security and protocol. I later learned that he told reporters he was there because “I just wanted to check out my future plane.” Had I known he was pulling that juvenile stunt, I would’ve been inclined to step from my car and use a word I believe best pronounced correctly. It begins with an m and ends with ah.

“Okay, guys,” I said. “Let’s talk Gaza for a moment. We all want this war to end and to get the hostages out, and I will work on it full-time when I am president, as I have been.” That morning, we woke to news of an Israeli strike that had killed at least eighty people in Gaza. As I left the hotel I took questions from the press in the parking lot, underlining yet again that even though Israel had every right to go after Hamas, far too many civilians were being killed and that Israel had a responsibility to avoid these deaths.

Despite what I think of Musk, I believe Joe Biden made a mistake in not inviting him to the White House in 2021 for an event promoting our electric vehicle policy. I shared this view with his team. Behind the president on the lawn that day were electric Fords, Chevys, Jeeps. American-made Teslas, then the world’s most innovative and successful electric cars, were nowhere to be seen. Biden, loyal to the UAW, was sending a message about Musk’s anti-union stance. But as president of the United States, if you are convening the nation’s manufacturers of electric vehicles and the biggest player in the field is not there, it simply doesn’t make sense. Musk never forgave it.

I wanted people to see that in ways that matter, my story was also their story. To see themselves in our neighborhood of nurses and firefighters, in my sister and me on our banana-seat bikes, in my mother’s struggle to save the down payment to finally own our own home. I wanted people to know that I, like them, cherish both my family by blood and my family by love. I recounted how I’d chosen to be a prosecutor after my best friend in high school confided that she was being molested by her stepfather. I said that when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim, but in the name of the people. Because a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us, and no one who is a victim should stand alone. I told how every day, in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words: “Kamala Harris, for the people.” In my career, I said, I’ve only had one client: the people.

As VP I drove the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which led to the first major gun-safety bill in nearly three decades, looking at gun trafficking and the training of fourteen thousand new mental health workers to work in schools like Apalachee and help avert such tragedies. But we need to do much more. As a gun owner myself, I am not coming to take away anybody’s guns. I am with the majority of Americans who want an assault weapons ban. I am with those who want universal background checks and red flag laws.

In a statement that day, Donald Trump blamed the shooting on a “sick and deranged monster.” He did not mention the gun. Every country in the world has sick and deranged individuals. Only the United States had eighty-three school shootings in 2024.

That brief interaction is the kind of moment that sustains my belief that we share more than we realize. We just have to be willing to look for it and see it. And then I glanced across to the far side of the room, where Joe was sharing a joke with some guys in MAGA hats. One of them took his hat off and offered it to Joe. Don’t take it. He took it. Don’t put it on. He put it on. Cameras clicked. Within hours, the picture was all over: Joe Biden in a MAGA hat, with the caption “Biden endorses Trump over Harris.”

When you have been in the public eye as long as I have, people have long memories for things I have done that they didn’t like and may have stewed over for years. I got some disapproval for saying that if somebody breaks into my house, they’ll get shot. But it’s the truth. I’ve never made a big deal of being a gun owner, but I have a reason to have a handgun. I store it securely. And I know how to use it.

He was being amiable. This man who had called me dumb, lazy, crazy, and mentally impaired. Implied that I drank and took drugs. Said I was a Marxist, a fascist. People had told me that he had the capacity, one on one, to show a warmer side. That he could even be charming. I hadn’t believed it. But now I was experiencing it. And then, a reality check: He’s a con man. He’s really good at it. Jason Carter, eulogizing his grandfather, observed that Jimmy Carter “was the same person, no matter who he was with or where he was. And for me, that’s the definition of integrity.” Trump epitomized the exact opposite. I’d readied myself for a phone conversation with Mr. Hyde, but Dr. Jekyll had picked up the call.

It was a long interview, and it was of course edited down, as is usual. When a bit of the edited footage was used as a promo on Face the Nation, Trump sued CBS for $20 billion, baselessly claiming that 60 Minutes edited the interview to make me look good. It was a nonsense claim, a frivolous suit, and in normal times CBS management would have brushed it off. But CBS is owned by Paramount Global, which was in the midst of seeking a merger with Skydance Media and needed approval from the Federal Communications Commission. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, stood to make hundreds of millions if the deal went through. Paramount ultimately settled the suit for $16 million in a move that veteran correspondent Dan Rather termed “a sellout to extortion by the President.” Bill Owens, the respected executive producer of 60 Minutes, and Wendy McMahon, the chief of CBS News, both had earlier resigned from their jobs because of corporate pressure to shape the news to Trump’s sensibilities.

If only we’d left it there. But Sunny asked a follow-up: “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” I had prepped for that question; I had notes on it. There was the answer I’d given in the debate: “I’m not Joe Biden and I’m certainly not Donald Trump.” I had a note that I was a new and different generation. And I had this: But to specifically answer your question, throughout my career I have worked with Democrats, independents, and Republicans, and I know that great ideas come from all places. If I’m president I would appoint a Republican to my cabinet. But I didn’t say any of that. I said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” I went on to describe things in our record that I was proud of, such as capping the price of insulin, bringing drug prices down, investing in American manufacturing and creating eight hundred thousand new jobs in that sector. I had no idea I’d just pulled the pin on a hand grenade. I wasn’t braced for the explosion that was coming.

When I was AG in 2015, a state prisoner sued to get gender-affirming surgery. My client was the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and, as its lawyer, I was required to support the case against that inmate, which we settled in the inmate’s favor. In 2017 a transgender prisoner in California was the first to get gender-affirming surgery based on that case, and twenty-two others have followed in California. That’s the law. But because I’d been on the opposing side of the case, a cry went up: Kamala doesn’t care about trans people. That wasn’t true. I wanted to rebut that claim.

I had known Reverend Sharpton for many years, working with him for criminal justice reform, praying with him at funerals for young Black men killed in police shootings. He was aware of my record as a prosecutor and how it had been mischaracterized. When I became a district attorney, this country was in an even worse place than it is now on criminal justice. I was one of the first elected progressive district attorneys, looking for ways to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail rather than put them in it. I didn’t seek jail time for simple marijuana offenses. My Back on Track initiative, connecting offenders with services and jobs, and also taking care of their mental health by doing things like hooking them up with counseling and gym memberships, worked so well it became a model for other jurisdictions. It is true that prosecution rates for violent crime increased on my watch. If you rape a woman, molest a child, or take a life, consequences should be serious and swift. I don’t apologize for that.

His victory was whisker-thin. He beat me by 1.5 percentage points in one of the closest elections in a century. A third of the electorate voted for me. But a third of the electorate stayed home. That means two-thirds of our country did not elect Donald Trump. Two-thirds of us did not choose this man or his agenda. That’s why I have no patience for anyone saying, I’m giving up on America because America wanted this. We did not. Of the third that voted for Trump, a good part of them voted for him on promises unkept.

By now, maybe, young people would be applying for their $25,000 housing down payment assistance. An increased child tax credit would be lifting thousands more families out of poverty. Medicare would be helping thousands of families and people in the sandwich generation to provide home care for their elderly loved ones. People in Africa would still have access to their AIDS medications. Our global friendships and our national reputation wouldn’t be in tatters. I can’t help having these thoughts, when the daily barrage of bad news becomes overwhelming. But I’m not looking back. Of all the advice and consolation I have received since the election, Minyon Moore’s words have moved me: “God gave you a beautiful 107 days to reclaim who you are. You have been able to push back against the caricatures, all the vile and ugly things, and be yourself. You gave America your heart and soul. You gave it your all.” I did. And I’m not done.

When I decided to become a prosecutor, I had to defend that decision to my family, like a student defending a thesis. I asked why, when we seek change, must it either be by breaking down doors or crawling on bended knee? I wanted a seat at the table. I wanted to make change from inside the system. Today I’m no longer sure about that. Because the system is failing us. At every level—executive, judicial, legislative, corporate, institutional, media—every single guardrail that is supposed to protect our democracy is buckling. I thought those guardrails would be stronger. I was wrong.