Former Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the first stop of her book tour for her new book about her presidential campaign, “107 Days,” at Town Hall in New York, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris said she doesn’t “feel burdened” about her political standing as the Democratic Party debates its direction ahead of 2028.
In an interview with The New York Times released Tuesday,
Harris noted that she is now free from what she characterized as the “transactional” result of campaigning, including asking Americans for their vote. Her recent efforts have instead been focused on promoting “107 Days,
” her memoir detailing her eleventh-hour entrance and defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 race.
“But there will be a marble bust of me in Congress,” she continued, appearing to reference the Senate’s collection honoring past vice presidents. “I am a historic figure like any vice president of the United States ever was.”
While previously describing her current mentality as “f— it,” Harris said she is living out her “freedom tour.”
“This sounds really corny,” Harris said in comments before one of the final stops of her book tour last month. “But we have to stand for the people. And I know that that sounds corny. I know that. But I mean it. I mean it.”
She pointed to how “thousands and thousands” of people are “coming to hear my voice” on stops throughout her book tour, which spanned over a dozen cities and two countries — noting that “every place we’ve gone has been sold out.”
Harris has generated headlines in recent months over the unexpected revelations in her book after it hit shelves in September. Throughout the more than 300-page memoir, she takes swipes at former President Joe Biden and prominent Democratic lawmakers, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, both of whom she considered as candidates for vice president before ultimately choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
While maintaining that she is “loyal” to Biden, Harris acknowledged that she “perhaps” should have told her former boss to reconsider running for reelection last year amid “all those months of growing panic.”
“It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris wrote. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”
The former vice president went on to say she is “not going to talk about my conversations with him” when pressed by The New York Times.
At one point in the book, Harris also explained that Buttigieg was her first choice as a vice presidential contender, calling him as “an ideal partner — if I were 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.”
The former Biden official said he was “surprised” to learn about the snub in an interview with POLITICO in September.
“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” Buttigieg said.
Now, Shapiro is firing back at Harris over her insistence that “he would want to be in the room for every decision.”
“That’s complete and utter bulls—,” Shapiro told The Atlantic earlier this month.
“I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies,” he added, later accusing her of “trying to sell books and cover her a–.”
Shapiro stood by his words during an interview on MS NOW’s “The Weeknight” on Monday.
Still, as questions swirl about her political future, Harris threw cold water on discussing whether she was ready to run for president again.
“It’s three years from now,” Harris said with emphasis. “I mean, honestly.”
Stories by Rachel Cohen