Kamala Harris TURNS on Joe Biden as she brands second presidential bid 'reckless'

While Biden had pledged to go ahead with his second run, senior Democrats eventually pressured him to give up the nomination.

Mrs Harris, who would lose the election to Donald Trump, has addressed this period in her most pointed attack on President Biden.

In her new book, published by The Atlantic, she wrote: "It’s Joe and [Former First Lady] Jill’s decision. We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotised.

"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. It should have been more than a personal decision."

Vice President Harris also questioned if she should have spoken out, as she said she felt "growing panic" about Biden's capabilities.

While Mrs Harris conceded that "perhaps" she should have spoken out against former President Biden, she said the 46th President was "the most consistently underestimated man in Washington."

However, she took aim at Mr Biden's team, theorising his staff had grown jealous of her when she did better than him in the polls.

She wrote: "Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed.

"None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well."

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One of the things Mrs Harris did bring up as a concern was the White House's response to the war in Gaza, claiming concern among voters about Mr Biden’s age was compounded by worries he was writing Israel a "blank cheque".

In another point of contention, she recalled how Mr Biden did not mention or thank her until nine minutes into an 11-minute speech.

Mrs Harris, a former senator also described the attacks she endured as vice president from right-wing critics and others and said she got little help from the White House in beating those back.

"They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible," she wrote.

Mr Biden's stunning withdrawal from the race was followed by questions about whether the White House withheld critical information about the president's mental acuity.

The former President's closest aides dismissed those concerns, saying he was fully capable of making important decisions. Representatives for Biden declined to comment for now on the book.

In her book, Mrs Harris denied there was a White House conspiracy to cover up Biden's age-related failings, which she described as becoming more pronounced as his presidential campaign heated up.

"On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired," Mrs Harris said.

Mrs Harris, 60, became the Democratic candidate and had just 107 days to make her case to the American public.

She lost to Trump, now 79, in the November election and has kept a low profile since then.

The former Vice President said in July she would not run for Governor of California.

Mr Biden was the oldest person to ever serve as US president. Now 82, he has been diagnosed with an "aggressive form" of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.