Jill Biden: Former president, Harris ‘still friends’

Former first lady Jill Biden said Wednesday that her husband and former Vice President Kamala Harris remain “friends,” nearly a year-and-a-half after they left office.

While promoting her new book at the Sixth & I synagogue in Washington, D.C., she said Harris recently called former President Biden.

“They’re still friends. … They talk, she calls him, or he calls her,” Jill Biden told journalist Paola Ramos.

“You have to understand Joe as a man,” the former first lady added. “I mean, he doesn’t… hold grudges.”

In her own book about the 2024 presidential campaign, Harris panned the former president’s decision to run for reelection. Biden, despite polling showing that voters wanted the aging politician to step aside, opted to campaign again.

Had he won, Biden would have been 86 years old at the end of his presidency.

The then-incumbent’s dismal debate performance against President Trump in June 2024 sparked calls from Democratic lawmakers for him to drop out. At the time, Harris publicly backed her boss.

But in her book, titled “107 Days,” the former vice president said Biden running again was a mistake.

“‘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 stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition,” she added. “It should have been more than a personal decision.”

When the former president officially dropped out in July 2024, Harris ascended to the nomination without going through a primary, campaigned for more than three months and lost to Trump in the November election.

While it marked her second unsuccessful bid for president, she has left the door open to seeking the Democratic nomination in 2028. In April, she said at the National Action Network conference in New York City that she was “thinking” about running for the Oval Office again.

“Listen, I might,” she told the Rev. Al Sharpton.

If she runs, Harris would likely be part of a crowded field of Democratic candidates. A poll conducted by Emerson College last month found that 10 percent of 432 likely primary voters backed Harris, placing her in a tie for fourth with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) — whom she passed over as her running mate in 2024 in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

In that survey, the former vice president trailed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who received support from 11, 16 and 18 percent of respondents, respectively. Nearly 2 in 10 respondents were undecided.

As for whether Jill Biden thinks Harris should run again, the former first lady expressed uncertainty on Wednesday.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she told Ramos.

Her new memoir, “View from the East Wing” was released on Tuesday.

Jill Biden: Former president, Harris ‘still friends’

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