Vice President Harris attempted to share some optimism with her supporters while addressing her Election Day loss to President-elect Trump on Tuesday, advising them to hold onto their "power."
“I just have to remind you, don't you ever let anybody take your power from you. you have the same power that you did before November 5, and you have the same purpose that you did, and you have the same ability to engage and inspire,” Harris said in a video shared by the Democratic Party on social platform X.
"So don't ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you," she added.
The video message was an excerpt from her talk Tuesday with the party's financial committee, when she and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), discussed the election as the campaign's spending has been under scrutiny.
During the call, Harris thanked top donors for backing the ticket despite it coming short earlier this month.
“The outcome of this election is obviously not what we wanted. It is not what we worked so hard for, but I am proud of the race we ran and your role in this was critical,” Harris said. “What we did in 107 days was unprecedented. Think about the coalition that we built.”
The vice president also noted that the campaign raised nearly $1.5 billion during the roughly three-month campaign run. Almost 8 million donors contributed to the ticket with an average donation being $56, she added.
“The work that you all did, it’s going to have [a] lasting effect,” she continued in her message. “Again I’ll say, you know, the election didn’t turn out like we wanted it to, certainly not as we planned for it to, but understand that the work we put into it was about empowering people. That’s the spirit with what we did.”
Harris’s remarks echoed her message to supporters the day after the election, when she conceded at Howard University. She told the crowd “do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”
She called on supporters at the time to stay engaged while also encouraging the peaceful transfer of power.
“I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case,” she said. “But here’s the thing, America — if it is— let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant, billion of stars. The light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”
Other members of Harris's team took to the "Pod Save America" podcast Tuesday, giving more insight into the campaign's decision-making process.
Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser to the campaign, said Harris “wasn’t willing” to publicly break with President Biden and wanted to sidestep the negative headlines in the press that such a move could cause.
“She wasn’t willing to, you know, change that precedent for whoever the future president, vice presidential partnership would be because it would mean a whole, you know, different set of problems, as if we don’t have enough problems in our democracy right now,” Cutter said on the podcast.
Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon defended the vice president amid claims that she dodged the media, calling the notion "bulls---."
“I think back and think we should have signaled more of our strategy early on about podcasts and who we were [trying to] reach and — but we had a limited amount of time to reach the people [we were trying to] reach and we were [trying to] go to them,” O’Malley Dillon told the podcast.
"But being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything, or we were afraid to have interviews, is completely bulls‑‑‑," she added.
Harris ultimately conceded to Trump during an address from her alma mater, Howard University. The president-elect's victory has rattled Democrats — who also lost both chambers of Congress — and has led to ongoing conversations about what led to their struggles at the polls and how they can turn the page on the losses.
Alex Gangitano contributed to this report, which was updated at 8:30 a.m. EST
