In her memoir 107 Days, Kamala Harris describes frustration during the 2024 VP debate where her running mate, Tim Walz, stumbled under questioning from Sen. J.D. Vance. Watching Walz’s performance unfold, Harris turned to her husband, Doug Emhoff, and said, “What is happening?” after she felt he fell for Vance’s tactics.
Harris had hoped Walz would be “the closer,” delivering strong answers, but she writes that he smiled and nodded along with Vance’s false show of bipartisanship. His misstep came when he had to respond to a question about being in Hong Kong during pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square but instead gave a muddled answer comparing himself to riding a bike in Nebraska.
Harris admits she underestimated the difficulty of the role she assigned to Walz, saying beforehand that she’d assumed he could handle high-pressure debate moments based on his rally performances and political experience — only to be let down when it counted most.