Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) this week accused former Vice President Kamala Harris of making false statements in her new memoir, suggesting she is peddling “lies” in order to boost book sales.
“I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies,” Shapiro said during an interview with the Atlantic published Wednesday, in reference to claims Harris made in 107 Days, which was released in September.
“I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her ass,” the governor added, later saying, “I shouldn’t say ‘cover her ass,’ I think that’s not appropriate. She’s trying to sell books. Period.”
Shapiro’s comments were a real-time reaction to learning about some of the more specific details in Harris’s book. The interview was conducted before the book came out, when some journalists had prior access.
Shapiro made it to the late stages of Harris’s selection for her running mate last year. The then-vice president ultimately decided instead to select Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), fueling speculation that there was some bad blood between her and the Pennsylvania governor.
While Shapiro publicly stood by Harris in the final days of her campaign, he denounced the former vice president’s account of the running mate selection process, as detailed in her book.
The book painted a broadly unflattering portrait of Shapiro, who is considered one of the most popular governors in the United States.
Harris wrote that during his vice presidential interviews, she felt Shapiro was more concerned with defining his role in the administration than helping her win, and suggested he attempted to monopolize the conversation. She recounted Shapiro saying he wanted to be present “for every decision” she made and claimed he asked an aide about whether the Smithsonian might work with him to loan Pennsylvania art for the house.
“She wrote that in her book?” Shapiro asked Atlantic reporter Tim Alberta. “That’s complete bulls***. I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies.”
Shapiro, who is viewed as one of the Democrats’ leading presidential contenders in 2028, is set to release his own memoir in January, detailing in part his experience being considered as Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election.
Some analysts said Shapiro seemed like the strongest contender of the candidates Harris interviewed for the role. Republican political strategists have argued that picking Walz could be the greatest mistake of the Harris campaign, contending that Shapiro is one of the most talented Democratic figures in contemporary politics. Polls at the time indicated that she may have won Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state, had she chosen Shapiro.
“I’m not going to get into my private discussions with the vice president,” Shapiro told the Washington Examiner last year in comments weighing in on Harris’s decision to pick Walz. “What I will say is, I said for two weeks, she had a deeply personal decision to make about who she wanted to be a running mate.”
The authors of the book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, which was released over the summer, claimed that Harris did not pick Shapiro because they were too similar, had competing political ambitions, and lacked chemistry.
Unlike her meetings with Walz and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), another vice presidential contender, Harris and Shapiro almost immediately began to butt heads, the authors wrote.
While “on paper, many Democrats thought Shapiro was the obvious choice,” the Pennsylvania governor “came across as overly ambitious, pushing Harris to define what his role would be,” according to the book.
“He also conceded it would not be natural for him to serve as someone’s number two, leaving Harris with a bad impression,” the book reads. “Shapiro seemed to want Harris to be invested in his success as much as he was in hers, and he didn’t say he wasn’t interested in potentially running for president in the future.”
HARRIS STUMPS FOR TENNESSEE DEMOCRAT IN COMPETITIVE SPECIAL ELECTION
Still, Shapiro publicly stood in Harris’s corner after her decision to pick Walz, telling voters days before the November election that she would deliver for the country.
“I want a serious person in the White House, who knows how to do this work, someone to who I can call and say, ‘Hey, Pittsburgh needs this,’ and who just understands the importance of Pittsburgh and our commonwealth, understands our local economy, and wants to invest here,” the governor said during an appearance in Pittsburgh.
