Kamala Harris Breaks Down How Biden Told Her He Was Dropping Out, But Is It Really True?

Thirteen years before his presidential run, Barack Obama published a compelling book called Dreams from My Father. The work significantly boosted his public profile, and the activist quickly began advancing through the political ranks.

However, there was a slight issue. Obama had presented Dreams from My Father as a nonfiction account of his experiences with race and identity in America. The book was convincing enough to be widely accepted as truth. But it wasn’t until three years into his presidency, when The Washington Post’s David Maraniss (not known for being a conservative critic) investigated and found that the book was more of a loose roman-à-clef and, at worst, a skillful work of fiction.

The key word here is skillful. The embellishments, if they can be called that, were believable. Those who were drawn to Obama’s narrative continued to accept it, even if it wasn’t entirely factual, because it was not only inspiring (at least to them) but also plausible.

If only Kamala Harris had taken a creative writing course with Obama during his teaching days at the University of Chicago. Because when it comes to crafting her own life story, Harris’s credibility seems to align more with that of her current boss, President Joe Biden, than Obama.

As you may know, Harris gave her first official interview as the Democratic nominee on Thursday. The interview, which included her running mate Tim Walz as a backup, was underwhelming. She provided vague policy statements without much detail, rambled through non-answers, and, of course, shared some heartwarming moments of “joy” carefully staged by CNN interviewer Dana Bash.

One of these moments was the charming story of how she found out that President Joe Biden was stepping aside and passing the torch to her while she was sitting down to eat pancakes with her family—an anecdote that brought Harris to tears as she recounted it.

“It was — it was a Sunday, so, here, I’ll — I’ll give you a little too much information,” Harris said, laughing.

“Go for it; there’s no such thing, Madam Vice President,” Bash encouraged her.

“My family was staying with us. And — including my baby nieces. And we had just had pancakes and, you know, ‘Auntie, can I have more bacon?’ ‘Yes, I’ll make you more bacon.’ And then we were going to sit — we were sitting down to do a puzzle,” she said, laughing again.

“And the phone rang. And it was Joe Biden. And — and he told me what he had decided to do. And I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And — and that’s how I learned about it.”

“And what about the endorsement? Did you ask for it?” Bash inquired.

“He was very clear that he was going to support me,” she said.

How sweet. And how very, very questionable.

Let’s take a moment to recall the events of that significant weekend, just over a month ago. The Biden administration was in a state of high alert as the week ended—and for good reason.

After a series of disastrous interviews that somehow worsened the president’s June 27 debate fiasco (“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman, to serve with a black president,” he infamously stated), the president had some sort of medical incident while campaigning in Nevada. The official explanation was a COVID-19 diagnosis, though the known facts don’t entirely align with that story.

Whatever the case, the Biden administration was experiencing the most significant drop in political support from a sitting president’s own party since Richard Nixon released the “smoking gun” tape in August 1974. California Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the House’s most influential lawmakers and likely California’s next senator, became the highest-profile Democrat to publicly call on Biden to end his campaign.

Behind the scenes, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reportedly telling Biden and his inner circle that internal polling data showed not only that Biden had no chance of re-election but also that his candidacy would drag down the Democrats in the House and Senate. She also made it clear she wanted an open primary process to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.

During that tense Washington weekend, nearly every Democrat with any influence was pressuring Biden and his team. And as the story goes, Kamala Harris was supposed to be the last person in the room with Biden—even if it was metaphorical due to his COVID isolation.

But while Washington was caught up in a political storm not seen in decades, the second-most powerful person in the Biden administration—who knew she would need to fight to avoid a primary challenge if Biden’s withdrawal, which seemed increasingly likely by the hour, happened—was enjoying a leisurely breakfast with her nieces. Making pancakes and bacon. Getting ready to do a puzzle.

And then, an unexpected phone call. Suddenly, out of her serene Sunday morning, she was thrust into the national spotlight.

Right. And Santa Claus flew down from the North Pole and personally escorted her to the White House in his sled to save the Secret Service the trouble.

I’m not saying this version of events is impossible. I’m saying it sounds nearly impossible, and it’s not the first time a part of Kamala’s backstory seems so far-fetched as to stretch credibility.

For example, in October 2020, while on the campaign trail with Joe Biden, Harris gave an interview to Elle Magazine’s Ashley C. Ford, who apparently had no access to an editor or fact-checker.

The opening of this unintentionally humorous piece read: “Senator Kamala Harris started her life’s work young. She laughs from her gut, the way you would with family, as she remembers being wheeled through an Oakland, California, civil rights march in a stroller with no straps with her parents and her uncle.

“At some point, she fell from the stroller (few safety regulations existed for children’s equipment back then), and the adults, caught up in the rapture of protest, just kept on marching. By the time they noticed little Kamala was gone and doubled back, she was understandably upset. ‘My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing,’ Harris says, ‘and she’s like, “Baby, what do you want? What do you need?” And I just looked at her and I said, “Fweedom.”'”

How sweet. How inspiring. And how (almost certainly) blatantly borrowed from an interview given by the most famous figure of the civil rights movement to its most famous chronicler.

In 1965, Alex Haley—the author of Roots and ghostwriter of The Autobiography of Malcolm X—interviewed Martin Luther King Jr. for Playboy. He asked MLK if he ever felt overwhelmed by the burden of responsibility or inadequate to its demands.

King replied that he “must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live in — for all men, black and white alike,” and then shared this story: “I never will forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. ‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom.’ She couldn’t even pronounce it, but she knew. It was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and has buoyed me.”

The stories are almost identical, yet this apparent plagiarism went unnoticed by Ford or any of her editors. Was this just a coincidence? Was Kamala Harris casually making pancakes and bacon with her family while the re-election campaign she was a part of, and possibly stood to inherit, was unraveling by the minute? You decide.

Or consider Harris’s well-known embrace of Kwanzaa, the winter holiday celebrating African-American culture. While there’s nothing wrong with that, her childhood memories of the holiday have raised some doubts.

“Every year, our family would – and our extended family, we would gather around, across multiple generations, and we’d tell stories,” Harris said in a December 2020 video.

“The kids would sit on the carpet and the elders would sit in chairs, and we would light the candles, and of course, afterward, have a beautiful meal. And, of course, there was always the discussion of the seven principles. And my favorite, I have to tell you, was always the one about self-determination, kujichagulia.”

Again, how sweet. But as Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire pointed out, not only was Kwanzaa invented in 1966—two years after Harris was born—but it didn’t become widely known until the 1980s, when Harris was supposedly smoking pot at college while listening to Tupac. (Still her favorite rapper, according to Kamala!)

I repeat: No, these things aren’t impossible. But when taken together, especially from someone with a history of embellishment, they seem very, very improbable.

Like Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is someone who has actively worked to create a captivating backstory without being overly concerned with its accuracy. Of those two men, one managed to pull it off. The other is such a poor liar that whenever he starts a sentence with “no joke,” you can be sure you’re about to hear some top-notch nonsense.

At the very least, you can’t say Kamala Harris didn’t learn anything from Joe Biden. Perhaps she can return the favor by sharing her pancake recipe with him as they sit down for a long chat about fweedom and kujichagulia. Judging by her relaxed schedule during the most chaotic weekend Washington, D.C. has seen in decades, she certainly has the time.