Kamala Harris Talks Why She Lost, Trump 'Destroying Our Government' In Fiery Interview on The View

Harris supporters should note that when asked pointedly if she would consider running again, Harris did not shut it down. Instead, she replied with a smile, "That's not in my immediate focus, I'm doing my book tour."

She's definitely still tuned in to what's going on in America today, even as her book and much of this interview was about how things went so spectacularly wrong for her last year when she, her family, her party, and half the nation thought she was on her way to a smooth victory over Trump.

This tour is the first time Harris has spoken publicly at any length about that loss, with the former vice president calling the election night, watching her hopes of becoming the first female president slip away, "probably one of the most difficult things that I had to reflect on and write about."

In fact, she said that she discovered in the process of writing the book that she and her husband Doug Emhoff had not even spoken about that night to one another. "It was that traumatic?" asked Joy Behar, and Harris could do nothing but agree, echoing the statement.

While writing the chapter, Emhoff told his wife for the first time that he'd started to get a sense that things weren't going their way after a rally appearance in Pennsylvania, but he "didn't want to put that on me." Instead, she told the panel, he "basically went in the shower and prayed that it was not going to be a bad night."

"That night, I grieved in a way that I have not since my mother died," Harris admitted, adding, "It was not at all about losing the race, I knew what it was going to mean for the country ... I knew what it was going to mean. I knew. All I could say over and over again was, 'My god, my god, my god.' It was very difficult."

Ana Navarro asked Harris if she could narrow it down to a "primary reason" she lost the 2024 election, but the former VP said "there are many factors," with "probably one of the biggest in my mind is we just didn't have enough time."

One factor that Harris does not claim is any of the -isms, which is why she rejected Joy Behar's assertion -- that she said former President Joe Biden shares -- that there was a factor of both sexism and racism in the race. When asked if she ever thought there would be a woman president, Harris was quick to say she had no doubts, because of her own journey.

"Every office I've held, I've been the first. Usually the first woman and often the first woman and the first person of color," she said. "The only time I was the second, I was the second Black woman ever elected to the United States Senate in its hundreds of years history."

At the same time, Harris added, "I'm not naive, race and gender do play a factor in some people's minds in how they vote. But my history tells me, because I have been the first in all of those, that people ultimately want to know that this is the best person to do the job and that's their focus. And that's how I've always run."

So what went wrong? Alyssa Farah Griffin suggested that it might be Harris' close ties with the previous president, saying that "many people saw you as an extension of Joe Biden." With that in mind, and Sunny Hostin emphasizing how "deeply unpopular" Biden was at the time that Harris stepped into the race, Griffin asked if there were "glaring warnings signs that you missed."

To this, Harris had to admit to a big misstep on her part. "I'm a loyal person and I didn't fully appreciate how much people wanted to know there was a difference between me and President Biden," she explained. "I thought it was obvious, and I didn't want to offer a difference in a way that would be received or suggested to be a criticism."

She also felt that she was doing enough work on the campaign trail to emphasize how she stood apart from her former running mate. "I thought I was making the point," she said. "And I realize now that I didn't fully appreciate how much of an issue it was."

Hostin also pointed to a very specific question that she asked Harris during her previous appearance on the show, which came just 28 days before election day. She read from 107 Days where Harris wrote, "Everything about my appearance on The View was going well until it wasn't."

"I asked you if there was anything you would have done differently than President Biden during the last four years," Hostin said on Tuesday's show, "and you said, 'There is not a thing that comes to mind.'" In her book, reflecting on that moment, Harris wrote that she had no idea she'd "just pulled the pin on a hand grenade."

"In the moment, I knew," Hostin said. "The Trump campaign weaponized your answer against you, my question, and some, including James Carville and Jake Tapper, point to that answer as a turning point in your candidacy. Do you think that moment tipped the election?"

"No, no," Harris insisted, to which Behar quickly joked, "Good, 'cause Sunny doesn't want to take the blame."

While owning up to some of the problems in her short campaign, Harris also said that there was something the president was doing that she did not do -- and it was in direct response to what the American people were expressing their concern and outrage over.

"I do believe one of the biggest deciders of the outcome of that election was that the American people were sick of things being so expensive and wanted that the prices would come down," she said.

Talking about her 107 days campaigning, in particular, she pointed out what Trump was saying on the campaign trail. "He said his number one priority and the number one thing he would do is bring down costs," she pointed out. "That's what he said and I believe there are a lot of people who voted for him believing that that's what he would do."

"Fast forward to today, prices are higher, the cost of food is higher, inflation is higher, unemployment is higher. He lied," she pointed out.

At the same time, she said it wasn't all lies. "There are certain promises he did keep, which is he was going to weaponize the Department of Justice and go after his political enemies, that he was going to silence critics against him, that he was going to fulfill whatever his fragile ego needed through the tool of our federal government."

"That he did, whatever he needed to do to enrich himself, literally in his pockets, not to mention his ego, he has done," she emphasized.

She then shared a story of a woman she'd spoken to whose Trump-supporting partner was being deported to Sudan, with the woman asking, "Why is this happening, he said he was only going to go after criminals?" Harris' response: "He lied."

At the same time, she said that Trump can't take credit for everything that his administration has been doing, or how rapidly it's been going, asserting that "he has been a useful tool for an agenda that is much broader than the one individual," referencing The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society.

"We are talking about an agenda that has been decades in the making for which we are now witnessing a high velocity event that feels like chaos because it's all happening so rapidly," she asserted, "But it is about the swift implementation of a plan that has been decades in the making."

She went on to cite Trump's appearance just today in front of the United Nations, saying that the last time he was there, the leaders of the world "laughed at him." She went on to say, "Remember, I don't know, several weeks ago that meeting with Chi and Kim Jong Un and Putin, you think they're not laughing as they create a new axis of partnership?"

Now that Trump has been in office for nine months, Harris talked about the stark contrast with which he carries himself as president when compared to Biden and pretty much every president before him. As an example, she referred to president's welcoming people into the Oval Office for cordial, meaningful moments and discussions -- until Trump.

"We have seen Donald Trump bring people into the Oval Office, be they a United States governor or the head of state of a friendly nation and embarrass them and ridicule and demean them," she told the women of The View. "That is not what a president does."

"This individual who occupies our White House right now has decided that he will be an emperor in his mind who will demonstrate his power by demeaning and belittling and making people feel small," she added.

But, despite what's happening, Harris believes "the American people are stronger than that, we are smarter than that." She referenced Trump's "nosediving" popularity and urged people "to remember remember that the power ultimately is with the people."

When asked by Griffin if she thinks that Trump has done anything right in office, Harris made a callback joke to her previous response before the election, saying, "Nothing comes to mind."

At the same time, it wasn't so much a joke. "I can leave it at that," she said of the comment, "but let me just say, I'm sure there are some things, but the reality is he's destroying our government, the institutions, the principals and values on which we were founded."

"I mean, what he has done to attack a free and independent press, free speech, what he has done to attack the people of our country in such a vicious way, I find there are no redeeming qualities," she added.

"We have to remind folks that they cannot let their light and their spirit be diminished by who happens to be in the Oval Office at this moment," she said. "That light is inside people. It's there and it cannot be diminished or extinguished by an election or an individual and we have to remember that. That light is inside us and it's inside each of us and we have to see it in each other and let that guide us through this very dark time."

As for how to get through and beyond this, Harris said there are lessons to be learned from Trump's victory for both her and the Democrats. "One of the things the 2024 made very clear is that the American people want their immediate needs met," she said.

"And so, going forward, I think that has to be an imperative," Harris argued. "We will have a plan for what needs to happen in the long term, because those are the most intractable issues, but we need to meet the immediate needs of people."

Harris also had a message for pundits and analysts "looking for a messiah, the savior of the Democratic party." To them, she said, "There are so many superstars in the party who are doing very, very good work and it is very important, I think, that we see that instead of having these endless conversations about who is the one, understand there are many."

That same philosophy has to be the approach to the issues Democrats will focus on -- there is not one, but many, "but I would frame them in the context of the immediate needs of the people."

She was also asked if the Democrats should get down "in the gutter" and fight dirtier than they traditionally have. In closing her arguments about how Democrats should move forward, she said, "I guess my last point is, you gotta fight fire with fire."

Kamala Harris'107 Days is out now.