Eagle-eyed viewers of the Democratic National Convention caught a touching moment between President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris right after Biden finished a bittersweet speech to the crowd in Chicago on Monday night.
Harris had just finished applauding alongside husband Doug Emhoff and first lady Jill Biden when she walked up to embrace the president and say something inaudible to him. While their exchange was muted over the raucous crowd applause, some lip-readings shed some light on what Harris told him.
“Part of what Harris could be seen saying to Biden when she embraced him on stage: ‘I love you, Joe, I do,’” wrote CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere on X, formerly Twitter, while video-driven politics outlet The Recount determined Harris said: “I love you so much.”
While neither have confirmed what was said, numerous social media users claim Harris also told Biden: “You had me crying.” Their interaction followed a momentous speech in which Biden, who dropped out of the race in July, handed Harris the proverbial baton.
“Selecting Kamala was the very first decision I made before I became the nominee, and it was the best decision I made in my whole career,” he said. “She’s tough, she’s experienced and she has enormous integrity. She will be a president we can all be proud of.”
Biden performed disastrously in the June debate against Donald Trump and failed to reassure voters with several public missteps in the weeks to come, which ultimately saw his polling numbers plummet and an increasing number of Democratic pundits calling for his exit before he officially stepped down.
“I’ve got five months left in my presidency and I’ve got a lot to do,” he said Monday. “It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love my job, but I love my country more. All this talk about how I’m angry at those people who said I should step down, it’s not true.”
Harris recently selected Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) as her running mate and seems to have hit Republicans where it hurts, adopting the messaging that their tactics are “weird.”