Political analyst Mark Halperin revealed last week that President Joe Biden’s team is prepared to push back against Vice President Kamala Harris if she attempts to challenge or criticize him in her forthcoming memoir. Halperin warned that Biden allies have unflattering accounts of Harris’s vice presidency they are willing to release if provoked.
Harris recently announced her upcoming book 107 Days, which chronicles her brief 2020 presidential campaign. The announcement came just a week after Biden reportedly secured a $10 million book deal with Hachette Book Group for his own presidential memoir, raising speculation about potential tension between the two.
Appearing on 2Way’s The Morning Meeting with Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine, Halperin said the two likely didn’t coordinate their book releases — and that Biden’s team is ready to retaliate if Harris uses hers to attack him. “If the Biden people decide that Kamala Harris is coming after Joe Biden,” Halperin said, “wait until you hear the Palin-esque stories” about their efforts to prepare her for leadership.
Halperin suggested that Biden insiders felt Harris was not up to the task of being president. He compared the situation to the late Sen. John McCain’s regret over selecting Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate — a sentiment McCain shared in his 2018 memoir.
Expanding on the topic during his own show Tuesday, Halperin explained that Biden and his advisers made extensive efforts to ready Harris for a potential presidency — either in the event Biden left office or if she ran for the top job herself. “They did their best to make her ready to be president,” Halperin said.
He noted that Harris was given numerous high-profile opportunities. “If you look at her public schedule, you'll see she had… an unprecedented number of meetings with world leaders,” Halperin added. “Every opportunity, whether they were in Washington or overseas, she met a lot of world leaders.”
Despite the preparation, Halperin said Harris didn’t meet the expectations. “They tried to get her up to speed,” he said, “but she was not quite ready for prime time. Let me put it that way.”
As both books prepare to hit the shelves, the political undertone suggests a broader struggle for influence and legacy between the president and vice president — and the potential for their past working relationship to take center stage in the 2026 political landscape.