Jon Stewart was visibly taken aback when former Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her belief that Joe Biden is “fully competent” to serve another term as President.
During an episode of his podcast, The Weekly Show, Stewart questioned Harris about her tenure in office and asked her to reflect on why she thought she lost to Donald Trump in the previous year’s election.
Harris admitted she regretted not differentiating herself more from Biden during her presidential campaign, but emphasized that her remarks were not about his competence.
“I am not talking about competence at all. No, I believe he was fully competent to serve,” Harris stated firmly.
Stewart queried, “Do you really?”
“I do,” Harris confirmed, prompting Stewart to reply, “That surprises me, actually.”
Harris defended Biden’s repeat gaffes before ending his re-election run as being down to the pressures of the campaign trail, saying that he still had the ‘stamina to govern’ behind the scenes.
‘Being a candidate for president of the United States is about being in a marathon at a sprinter’s pace, having tomatoes thrown at you every step you take,’ she said.
‘And to be the seated president, the sitting president while doing that – it’s a lot. It’s a lot.’
Jon Stewart was left visibly shocked after former Vice President Kamala Harris said she believes Joe Biden was ‘fully competent’ to serve another term in the White House
Harris insisted that Biden ‘had the stamina to govern’, and said she stood by him when she was facing pressure to distance herself because she ‘cared about him deeply’
Stewart did not appear impressed by Harris’ stance on Biden’s competency, and questioned whether a person who struggled campaigning had the ability to lead a nation.
‘I think it’s a hard case to make for people that he didn’t have the stamina to run, but he had the stamina to govern,’ he said.
Stewart asked Harris about why she stood behind Biden throughout her campaign and backed many of his policies, to which she said she ‘cared about him deeply.’
‘I did not want to pile on with all the criticism that he was facing. I didn’t think it was necessary,’ Harris said.
‘I do realize also in reflection that I did not fully understand how big of an issue it was for some people, for me to distinguish myself from him. I felt that the distinction between he and I was pretty clear.’
‘Knowing what I know now, I would’ve probably approached it a bit differently,’ she added.
Harris appeared on the podcast as part of her promotion tour for her new book 107 Days, which detailed her perspective on her four-month campaign for the White House.
Harris said she regretted not drawing a clearer distinction between herself and Biden during her unsuccessful run for the presidency, but insisted she was ‘not talking about competence’
The former Vice President has come under scrutiny for some references in her book, including a candid admission that she regretted not pushing Biden out of the 2024 campaign sooner.
In an excerpt of the book, Harris admitted: ‘During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running? Perhaps.
‘Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run.’
‘He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty,’ she wrote.
Harris also revealed that going into the 2024 campaign, she automatically followed the ‘mantra’ set by the White House that it was Biden’s decision to make with his family if he wanted to run for reelection.
‘Was it grace, or was it recklessness?’ Harris asked. ‘In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.’
Harris’s remarks about Biden’s standing in her book led former aides to the president to attack her soon after she began her promotional tour.
One former Biden White House official told Axios in September that Harris was ‘simply not good at the job.’
‘She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration’s key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was,’ the official scathed.
Another ex-official said that Harris could not blame Biden for losing her 2024 campaign, despite her claim that ‘107 days’, as her book is named, was not enough time to run a successful campaign.
‘The independent variable there is the vice president, not Biden or his aides,’ the aide said.
