Stephen Colbert’s Big Interview with Kamala Harris Shows Neither Can Change

I’d like to think I’m past the point where the 2024 presidential election can break my spirit. There’s no room to lament about the losers. But here we are, seven months into 2025, and I’m filled with a hollow rage and a familiar disappointment as I sit through an interview that feels entirely disconnected from the urgency of our reality. And hey, I’m not so naive that I believe that Stephen Colbert and former Vice President Kamala Harris can save us from Trump or even have the desire to do so. It’s just so irritating to be reminded of how incapable of it they are — like during tonight’s 30-minute campaign/book ad. 

On Thursday night, Harris made a historic appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It was her first interview since she left office in January. She was there to promote her book about the 107-day presidential campaign she ran against Donald Trump. Titled 107 Days, Harris promises it will detail the intimate and gritty details of the last-ditch effort to prevent Trump from taking office after a rapidly declining Joe Biden was pressured to back out of the race. 

As we’ve already pointed out, the book is a running joke on Veep. For those unfamiliar, Veep is a show about the selfish motivations that drive our most dedicated public servants. After walking into a hero’s welcome on the Colbert set, Harris unfortunately hit on a lot of the tropes Veep portrayed about politicians gearing up to ask the American public for votes and money. She said she’s tired of trying to work within a broken system, and instead she’s going on a listening tour across America. 

“To be very candid with you, when I was young in my career, I had to defend my decision to become a prosecutor with my family,” Harris said in a serious tone. “And one of the points that I made is why is it then when we think we want to improve a system or change it that we’re always on the outside on bended knee or trying to break down the door? Shouldn’t we also be inside the system? And that has been my career. Recently, I made the decision that I just — for now — don’t want to go back in the system. I think it’s broken. I want to travel the country. I want to listen to people. I want to talk with people. And I don’t want it to be transactional where I’m asking for their vote.” 

Colbert, assisted by the audience, used this statement to try and goad her into the running for president again. 

The rest of the segment was a pretty painful watch: Colbert lobbed softball questions at Harris, and Harris evaded them, promising the better answers are in the book. It was embarrassing for Colbert; here he was with one of the most coveted interviews on the planet, and Harris wouldn’t come clean on how she really feels about Biden’s decisions. Not only that, but she wouldn’t even tell Colbert how Doug Emhoff forgot to celebrate her birthday the month before Election Day. It made Colbert look inept, and it made Harris look stagnant. 

Maybe it’s too much to expect for two people who have been beaten down by the Trump administration so severely to be able to meet this moment with anything other than mediocrity. Maybe they can’t see that the same political playbook, the same coddling of the powerful is part of what paved the road to where we are now. 

But if Harris and Colbert are unwilling to adapt, why should we bother giving them our attention?