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Former Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that she "moaned" to her husband, Doug Emhoff following former running mate Tim Walz's disappointing vice presidential debate performance in her new memoir 107 Days.
Harris said that Walz needed to be the "closer" during the October 1, 2024, debate against eventual Vice President JD Vance as she would not get a second debate with President Donald Trump.
“When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, ‘What is happening?'” Harris wrote, claiming she thought Walz was duped by Vance's "mild-mannered aw-shucks" demeanor.
“I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate,'" she added.
The former vice president wrote that there was “more riding on Tim’s debate than there should have been" and said it was "not a comfortable role" for the Minnesota governor.
“He had fretted from the outset that he wasn’t a good debater,” Harris wrote. “I’d discounted his concerns. He was so quick and pithy in front of the crowds at our rallies, I thought he’d bring those qualities to the podium.”
Harris also revealed in her memoir that former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was actually her first choice for a running mate, but believed that Buttigieg, a married gay man, would've been an "ideal partner" if she, herself, was "a straight white man."
“But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” Harris wrote. “Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.
“And I think Pete also knew that — to our mutual sadness.”