Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday recalled the moment she learned nearly six weeks ago that President Joe Biden was dropping out of the 2024 race, which led to her quickly rising to the top spot on the Democratic presidential ticket.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on July 21, the Democratic presidential candidate outlined the situation, breezily admitting that she was about to give away “too much information.”
Harris said she had just had breakfast with her family, including her baby nieces, and was about to do a puzzle when President Joe Biden called her from his home in Rehoboth, Delaware, to announce that he was dropping out of the race.
“He told me what he had decided to do,” Harris said. “I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said, ‘Yes.'”
Harris added that she didn’t have to push Biden to support her, but was more concerned about how he was feeling at the time.
“He was very clear that he would support me,” she said.
Harris went on to praise the Biden administration’s record, adding that history will show his presidency was “transformative.”
Earlier in the interview, Harris said she has no regrets about defending Biden’s fitness to serve and his decision to stay in the race immediately after his poor performance in the debates.
Biden decided to withdraw his candidacy about a month after that debate, after facing mounting pressure from members of his own party to pass the torch to the next generation amid worrying poll numbers.
Overall, Harris said she is “so proud” to have served alongside Biden, calling it one of the “greatest honors of my career.”
“He has the intelligence, the dedication, the judgment and the spirit that I believe the American people rightly deserve in their president,” she said.
Still, Harris insisted her candidacy offers Americans an opportunity to turn the page on the divisions of the past decade, a period she said began when Trump launched his bid for the White House in 2016.
“I’m talking about an era that began about a decade ago where there was a suggestion, which I think is perverted, that the measure of a leader’s power is based on who you knock down rather than where I think most Americans stand, which is the belief that the true measure of a leader’s power is based on who you lift up,” she said.
