Former US Vice President Kamala Harris has expressed concern that she did not ask Joe Biden to withdraw from the race for the White House.
In a BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, she said: “I wonder if I should have spoken to him, urging him not to stand for re-election.”
After months of speculation about his health and mental acuity, President Biden abandoned his bid for re-election in July 2024 following a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump weeks earlier.
Harris, who ran as the Democratic nominee but lost to Trump, said in her book about her three-month campaign that she did not discuss her concerns with President Biden about his abilities. Nor did the then 81-year-old man raise the issue with her.
In the book 107 Days, the former vice president wrote that Biden's decision to run again was a choice that should not have been “left to individual egos, individual ambitions.” She wrote that she “maybe” should have discussed the matter with him.
In this interview, she told the BBC that she still wonders whether she should have done something different and talked to him about it.
“I wonder if I should have talked to him and convinced him not to run.” She said: “It worries me, especially when I think about whether I should even bring this up.” She wondered whether it was “grace or recklessness” that prevented her from speaking out.
She added that her concern is not Biden's ability to serve as commander in chief, but whether he can meet the demands of a grueling election campaign to remain in the White House.
When asked why there was such a difference, she said there was a major difference between running for president and serving as president. And running against Trump is even harder, she said.
She said she was “worried about him [Biden's] abilities, with the level of endurance and energy that this requires, especially in the fight against the current president.”
The former vice president said she found it difficult to speak out because she risked being accused of promoting her own political interests if she confronted Biden about his health.
“Part of the problem was that would it be… would it really be an effective and productive conversation, given what would otherwise seem to be my self-interest?”
The question of whether more people around Biden could challenge him about the wisdom of his re-run has become a major talking point.
One of the books by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Original Sin, claims that those close to him hid his physical deterioration from the public.
Biden aides have refuted the allegation, saying there were physical changes with age but no evidence of mental incapacity and nothing that would affect his ability to do his job.
In his first interview since leaving the White House in May this year, Biden told the BBC it would not have mattered if he had left the race earlier.
His former vice president is in the UK promoting his new book. In a wide-ranging conversation with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday's show, Harris also said it was “possible” she could run for the White House again.
She has already ruled out running for governor in her home state of California, and a former prosecutor told the BBC she is “not done” with public service.
