Former vice president Kamala Harris' inner circle was preparing for something to happen to Joe Biden long before he ended his re-election campaign, according to Harris' memoir 107 Days.
A year before Biden dropped out, Harris' brother-in-law Tony West began assembling a "Red File" laying out plans for Harris to take over, Fox News reports.
"A year earlier, he had started what he called the ‘Red File,'" Harris wrote in her book. "With a president in his eighties, he suggested, it would be malpractice on my part to be unprepared if, God forbid, something should happen."
Harris claims she "didn't want to dwell on such an eventuality” and “I left it in his hands.”
The "Red File" was continually updated as pressure mounted for Biden to quit, according to Harris.
The plans ultimately did come into play when Biden suspended his campaign and endorsed Harris to replace him, although Biden never resigned the presidency.
Democratic soon rallied behind Harris after Biden anointed her, but the party's top elites did not plan for a coronation. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and other top Democrats wanted Harris to prove herself first, Harris writes.
The former vice president says she was frustrated with Biden at times, citing a pre-debate phone call in which Biden accused her of badmouthing him.
“I just couldn't understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself," she wrote.
Kamala's book tour is creating new headaches for her party, as Democrats continue pointing fingers over their 2024 defeat.
Like many Democrats, Harris blames her loss on Biden's age and overstretching ambition, but she acknowledges her own "recklessness" in not intervening to stop his campaign sooner.
The fact that her own team was preparing for the worst leaves little doubt that Harris knew that Biden simply was not up to the job, no matter how she might try to spin things. But Harris says she feared that pressuring Biden would be seen as selfish, given her position.
"I talk about what was going through my head, right? And what was going through my head to not bring it up was that it would come off as being very self-serving, and therefore maybe lack the credibility that it deserved. But I do think about it. I do think about it," she told Good Morning America.
Earlier this year, Biden's family announced that he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. He also underwent surgery to treat
