OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A surrogate for Kamala Harris’ campaign against now-President-elect Donald Trump told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday that she was “misled” by top officials and that the overall effort by the vice president was an “epic disaster.”
Lindy Li, who said she raised “millions” for Harris, explained to co-host Will Cain that Harris’s campaign officials made a series of false promises and repeatedly claimed that the internal data showed the vice president would handily defeat Trump.
“This is just an epic disaster. This is a one-billion-dollar disaster,” Li said, referencing how the losing Harris campaign blew through $1 billion in fundraising and ended up with millions of dollars in debt.
“It’s incredible, and I raised millions of that. I have friends that I have to be accountable to and to explain what happened because I told them it was a margin of error race,” she added.
Li stated that Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon assured all Harris surrogates that the vice president would win, even going so far as to produce videos to reinforce the message. “I believed her. My daughters believed her. And so, they wrote massive checks,” Li told the Fox News co-host. “I feel like a lot of us were misled.”
She also told Cain earlier in the interview that the “backstabbing” between Biden and Harris began long before the vice president replaced him on the 2024 ticket.
“It was a lot of backstabbing we saw in the press; people were leaking stuff all the time. The White House was leaking like a sieve when it came to Kamala Harris,” said Li.
“In the final years she was able to stabilize and stop the bleeding of her staff because there was a lot of turnover as well. And we saw the press report about that. And things have finally started to calm down,” she said, going on to add that President Joe Biden’s rapid endorsement of his VP was in response to his anger at the Democratic machine for forcing him out.
“Kamala Harris wasn’t at the top of the ticket,” Li said. “Biden’s endorsement of Harris caught a lot of people off guard. Even the chief Dems of the party.”
“I really think it was a big fu— a big ‘F you,’ I’m so sorry,” she said to Cain, catching herself before finishing the statement. She also said that there was constant friction between the Biden and Harris camps.
WATCH:
Finger-pointing has also erupted over the Harris campaign’s decision to spend up to $20 million on swing-state concerts Monday night, just hours before the VP’s crushing election loss to Donald Trump.
According to the New York Post, the spending has sparked concerns that everyday staff and vendors may not get paid, as reports indicate the campaign is in debt by the same amount. If they get stiffed, Harris’ campaign could likely face legal action, especially from vendors who want what’s owed them.
Members of the defeated Harris team told The Post that the concerts had a damaging impact on the campaign’s finances, and this was no secret. One planned performance by ’90s alt-rock icon Alanis Morissette was even canceled to save money.
The seven swing-state concerts held on election eve featured performances by Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh, and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, with 2 Chainz joining Harris for an eighth concert in Atlanta on November 2, just three days before the election, the outlet said.
Two sources revealed that Stephanie Cutter, a veteran of the Obama campaign, championed the concert concept as a strategy to mobilize lower-propensity voters to the polls.
While the performers volunteered their time and talent, the events still required a significant commitment of manpower and financial resources.
According to a source who spoke to The Post, David Plouffe, a fellow Obama alum, supported Cutter’s plan.
“I’m sure vendors will start to get upset soon,” another source added, noting that staff payments do not seem to be impacted so far, even as reimbursements are still pending.
