Page 18 of 107 Days

I am a stickler for being on time—I feel it’s a mark of respect.

Everyone’s time is valuable. But sometimes schedules go sideways, and I fall short.

That wouldn’t happen with the chancellor.

Germans value punctuality, and I was determined we wouldn’t come off as overly casual Americans.

I asked to be passed a note when we had five minutes left, so that I could wrap the discussion gracefully and end precisely on time.

When my staffer handed me the requested note and I started to wind up the discussion, she waved me off.

“Let me tell you a personal story,” she said.

As a woman and an outsider who had risen to the highest level of her nation’s government, she had particular advice she wished to share.

She detailed how difficult her rise in politics had been, as a woman from East Germany at a time when her party was dominated by West German men.

As it became clear how formidable she was, the attacks became personal, mean.

“They used to call me…” She turned to her translator, whom she’d barely consulted during our meeting, and said a German word.

“It is a very ugly bird,” the translator explained.

“They used to call me this—this ugly bird,” she said. “And at first, it hurt me deeply.”

She leaned forward.

“Don’t you ever let them make you cry.”

On July 31 I was aboard Air Force Two, en route to Houston, where I would address Sigma Gamma Rho, another of the Divine Nine sororities.

Four days earlier, a supporter had offered to add a fundraiser ahead of that event.

They thought, at such short notice, they might raise a million dollars.

They’d raised $2.5 million. I would spend that night in Houston, and the next day I would deliver a eulogy for the trailblazer congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, my sorority sister, a distinguished lawyer and judge, and a smart and strategic legislator whose district encompassed most of central Houston.

She was a breast cancer survivor, but pancreatic cancer had taken her life.

I was in my cabin polishing the eulogy, when Kirsten, my media adviser, and Lorraine, my chief of staff, rapped on the door.

“Trump just said you’re not Black.”

He was onstage at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago, being interviewed by a three-woman panel.

It wasn’t a comfortable crowd for Trump.

He got off to a rocky start, branding ABC reporter Rachel Scott “nasty” and “rude,” after her first question, about why Black voters should trust him, in which she’d quoted his own racist language.

Then she asked her second question: Republicans had said I was a DEI hire.

Did he think I was only on the ticket because I was a Black woman?

He replied that he had always thought I was Indian. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”

It was the same old divisive playbook, using race as a wedge.

He’d used it on Obama with all the birther libels.

He’d even used it against Nikki Haley, deliberately mispronouncing her given name, Nimrata, and pretending he didn’t know if she was eligible to be president since her parents were Indian-born.

He’s an expert at suggesting that someone is a fraud—that you cannot believe this person.

Which I believe some psychologists would call “projection.”

Hurtful and degrading comments are, sadly, part and parcel of running for office these days.

You can’t endure it at this level unless, above all else, you care about the people you want to represent and the things you will be able to do to make their lives better.

If you do care about that, then there’s no time to wallow in self-pity or lament the unfairness of it.

Not that you don’t feel it. Not that it’s okay.

It is what it is. And it was familiar to me.

Where it crosses the line is when opponents go after family members.

That same day, anti-Muslim activist, 9/11 conspiracy peddler, and far-right Trump booster Laura Loomer posted on X about an affair Doug had, fifteen years earlier in his previous marriage, with a teacher at his children’s school.

It was quickly picked up by the Daily Mail and the New York Post .

Of course, I knew about this. Doug had told me about it when we were dating.

We disclosed it during my vetting for VP.

By marrying me and taking a very public stand at my side, Doug had knowingly put himself in the line of fire.

His former wife, Kerstin, had not, and neither had the kids—nor, for that matter, the teacher, who was soon being ambushed by paparazzi in the driveway of her home.

I hated what was happening: that the kids had to be reminded of this awful period, that their friends would talk about it all over again, that Kerstin would have her privacy invaded, and that all of them would be dragged back into a miserable time.

But I was running for president. I told Doug that he would need to deal with it: I couldn’t look away from the job in front of me.

He handled it like the mensch that he is, issuing a statement taking responsibility and expressing regret.

Kerstin bravely and forthrightly issued a statement of her own, saying: “Doug and I decided to end our marriage for a variety of reasons, many years ago. He is a great father to our kids, continues to be a great friend to me and I am really proud of the warm and supportive blended family Doug, Kamala, and I have built together.”

People like Loomer do their dirty work hoping their target will lash out and say something inappropriate or be personally wounded to distraction.

I don’t want my family to be hurt, and I think that’s true for every honorable human who runs for office.

If we were holding on to norms of decency, families should be off-limits. Sadly, they are not.

The “happened to turn Black” remarks blew up all over the media. Trump’s team pulled out an online cooking show where I’d made masala dosa with Mindy Kaling and chatted with her about my maternal grandparents, using it as “proof” that I claimed to be Indian. I am proud of my Indian heritage.

I was running to be president, not to be an American history professor. It wasn’t my duty to school the former president on America’s racial history—the one-drop rule; the one-eighth law—and how this history had been, and still is, weaponized.

When my mother came alone to this country from India as a nineteen-year-old student in 1958, there were still very few South Asians in the United States. She knew that with a Black Jamaican-born father, Americans would see us as Black children. She raised Maya and me to be proud Black women.

I could hear my mother’s stern voice: “Kamala, don’t ever let anyone tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.”

On the plane that day when I first heard about Trump’s remark, we patched in Brian Fallon from DC on a call to strategize a response. Brian wanted me to punch back with a big speech about my racial identity, like the one Obama had given. I was so pissed that I didn’t hold back.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I was not about to take Trump’s bait. He lies all the time, I told Brian. He throws out outrageous statements to distract from the real issues. “Today he wants me to prove my race. What next? He’ll say I’m not a woman and I’ll need to show my vagina?”

Brian, on the other end of the phone, fell silent. I imagined the deep crimson of his blush.