Kamala Harris says one thing about Trump’s second term caught her completely off guard, and it was not Trump himself.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, 61, said on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, that the development she “had not anticipated was the capitulation” of those in positions of influence.
Harris made the remark on the podcast of host Keke Palmer, telling her that her warnings about President Donald Trump’s second term have come true. The one exception, she said, was how fast powerful people folded.
“The number of powerful people who have stood quietly by in the face of what they know to be corruption and behavior and approaches that are contrary to the best interest of our country, the powerful people who you know bend the knee at the foot of a tyrant. I hadn’t anticipated that that was going to happen, to the degree it has,” Harris told Palmer.
“And this is not a moment where we can afford to be passive,” she said.
A Judge Keeps Reporters Inside the White House
Harris also criticized the Trump administration’s revocation of press credentials in the same interview. The move hit journalists at CNN, MS NOW and Politico. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly restored the journalists’ press credentials, first with a temporary restraining order on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, and then with a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, Oct. 13, that keeps them in place while the lawsuit proceeds. The White House has said it intends to appeal.
“You’re in the wrong place. If you want to do things in secret, then why don’t you just leave the White House?” Harris told Palmer. She also said, “First of all, it shows the extent to which the current occupant of the White House has such a fragile ego.” She asked, “If you can’t stand people to watch what you’re doing and listen to what you’re saying, one has to ask, what are you doing?”
Six in 10 Say Trump Crossed a Line to Profit
The president’s popularity is sliding with voters, driven by the administration’s handling of the economy and the war in Iran. An AP-NORC poll found about six in 10 Americans believe Trump has done something illegal or unethical to profit from the presidency. The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted the poll Sept. 24-28.
Some of his most powerful backers have not moved. Billionaire Elon Musk, who spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), still supports Trump. Meta head Mark Zuckerberg and other technology executives have kept up a measure of support, even as the president’s numbers with everyday voters sag.
Harris described a slice of the country’s most powerful operating on pure self-interest. They act not on principle and not on morality, she said, but on what they can extract from a relationship — and they are ready to walk away once it stops delivering. She said she did not see it unfolding to the extent it has.
Harris Urges Americans to Vote Like “Transactional Voters”
Harris urged Americans to go to the ballot box as “transactional voters.” She rejected the alternative of opting out of elections over broken parts of the system. She told Palmer that plenty has worked and plenty has not, and that disappointment is no reason to remove oneself. Declining to vote, she said, amounts to being silenced.
The pitch treats voting as leverage rather than an act of faith. It answers the transactional behavior she described among the powerful. Her argument is that voters should use ballots to demand something in return, instead of waiting for the system to earn their trust.
A 2028 Question and a Donor Backlash
Harris is pushing to expand the Supreme Court, add new states and reform the Electoral College if Democrats win control of Congress. The package would require majorities her party does not currently hold.
She has not decided on a 2028 run, she told Palmer. “I haven’t decided yet. I will, I promise,” she said, adding that “’28 doesn’t matter if we don’t do ’26 right.”
A report the same day, Oct. 13, carried criticism from nearly 20 California-based Democratic donors and strategists. They faulted her failure to reinvent herself politically as she weighs another White House run. Maria Cardona, an outside adviser to Harris, called the story “infuriating.”
Longtime Democratic strategist Doug Herman said Harris “totally blew it. … She hasn’t gotten into the mix.” Former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges said: “I don’t see anything different myself. It seems like more of the same to me.”
Harris is positioning herself as a critic focused less on the president than on the institutions and individuals she says declined to check him.