Kamala Harris tells Stephen Colbert that U.S. democracy is ‘broken’

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Former vice president Kamala Harris expressed deep concern about U.S. democracy, describing it as a broken system on CBS’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Thursday evening, in her first interview since the 2024 presidential election.

She denounced Congress for “sitting on their hands” and for failing to “stand in the way” of some of President Donald Trump’s policies. Harris did not address a question from host Stephen Colbert about the possibility of her running for the White House in 2028.

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Here are four key highlights from her appearance.

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Harris painted a dire picture of U.S. democracy

Harris explained her decision not to run for California governor after Colbert asked whether that meant she was planning to run “for a different office.” She said the system was broken, despite “so many good people who are public servants; teachers and firefighters and police officers and nurses and scientists.”

“I always believed that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles, and I think right now that they’re not as strong as they need to be,” she added.

Harris said she plans to travel the country and talk to individual voters without the burden of asking for their votes. “I want to talk with people, and I don’t want it to be transactional,” she said.

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Harris warned against trying to ‘ride out’ Trump’s presidency

When Colbert asked if Harris believed people think they can “just ride out” Trump’s presidency, Harris said it is “completely naive” to think that way. “There are a lot of people who think they’re riding out the storm as an excuse to be feckless,” she added. Moments earlier, Harris had said that those who should “consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy” had capitulated to Trump.

“Look, we designed our democracy with three independent, coequal branches of government,” Harris continued, before denouncing Congress for not doing enough to challenge Trump’s aim to dismantle the Department of Education.

“I mean, when you see that the president of the United States is trying to get rid of the Department of Education, and Congress has the role and responsibility to stand in the way of that, and they’re just sitting on their hands, and then they go to recess,” she said.

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She also criticized last year’s Supreme Court decision granting immunity to former presidents for official acts taken in office.

“God thank those members of the court who write brilliant dissents and remind us of what the democracy and the rule of law is supposed to be,” she added, referring to Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, who opposed the ruling.

Harris said she wanted to thank Mike Pence

Harris said she was “very happy to compliment” fellow former vice president Mike Pence “as often as I can for having the courage” to stand up to Trump in January 2021, when Trump pressured Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in his favour.

Harris made the remarks as she was answering a question about how she felt in January 2025, when she had to certify the electoral votes of the 2024 presidential race, which she lost to Trump.

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Harris praised former president Joe Biden

When Colbert asked Harris about her thoughts on Biden’s shaky performance in a presidential debate with Trump in June 2024, Harris neither affirmed nor rejected that characterization.

“Let me say something about Joe Biden,” she said. “I have an incredible amount of respect for him, and I think that the way that we should be thinking about where we are right now is to remember that we had a president of the United States who believed in the rule of law, who believed in the importance of aspiring to have integrity and to do the work on behalf of the people, and that’s where I’ll leave that.”

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