Kamala Harris was so stunned by her election day loss to Donald Trump she couldn't even put her defeat into words, and she felt like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi let her down ... according to a revealing new book about her failed presidential bid.
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00:00The fact that she was so, the way the people that you spoke to described almost blindsided
00:08by losing the election, it made me feel like, all right, she's going to be gun shy to jump
00:17into another campaign.
00:18The thing that we report in this book that is fascinating to me, I mean, I didn't even
00:22know this going into it, but they really thought that they were going to win.
00:26And when she does find out, we take you inside her house at the Naval observatory where she
00:32is that night and she is without words.
00:35She can't express, you know, she keeps, she asks her aides if they, they're prepared to
00:41do a recount, if they're sure that they've actually lost.
00:46And you know, Tim Walls at the same time, we take you inside his hotel room at the Mayflower
00:52in Washington and he has the same exact reaction.
00:56You also take us inside the room in this crazy, we've never seen this before experience
01:02we all went through of president Biden dropping out and then Kamala Harris's move to try to
01:09consolidate the democratic party behind her as quickly as possible.
01:13So there wouldn't be a competition, but somebody who was not into that idea was Barack Obama.
01:19She's always sort of, as we report in the book, she's always tried to cozy up to him.
01:23She respects him quite a bit.
01:26She likes his, the aides that surrounded him and wanted to invite them to her parties at
01:32the Naval observatory when she was vice president.
01:35And you know, she was really looking for his approval this time around and was really kind
01:40of underwhelmed by his support in the, in the very end.
01:44She was really upset by the fact that he took several days to get behind her.
01:49She knew that he was working, you know, he was trying to take the temperature of lawmakers
01:54because he was interested maybe in perhaps doing an open primary and was interested in
02:00that idea.
02:01And so there were some very hurt feelings on her part.
02:04I think the former house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, she always felt like she couldn't, that Harris
02:10couldn't win this election.
02:12And so she was also trying to look at other options.
02:15I think the president, the former president Obama, he was also looking for other options.
02:20He wasn't quite convinced that that was the right democratic ticket.
02:24They could have won this election.
02:26My coauthor and I greatly believe that, but there were so many missteps along the way.
02:31And I think this, like our other books, like Shattered, which was a huge hit in 2016, kind
02:37of presents that guidebook and gives you sort of a way to, or gives Democrats a way to perfect
02:44what they, or do better next time, I should say.