By Paul Farrell

Copyright independent

Kamala Harris has branded Donald Trump as a “tyrant” in an MSNBC interview, as her tell-all book about her presidential run goes on sale.

Speaking with Rachel Maddow, the former Vice President also likened her opponent in the 2024 election to a “communist dictator.”

Harris, 60, added that she was disappointed in the “capitulation” to Trump by big businesses.

“I worked closely with the private sector over many years, and I always believed that if push came to shove, those titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy, for the importance of sustaining democratic institutions.

“And one by one by one, they have been silent. They have been, you know, yes, I use the word feckless,’ she said.

Trump won the 2024 election in a landslide victory, which saw him gain 312 electoral college votes. He also won the popular vote with 77,302,580 Americans casting their ballots for the Republican candidate. Meanwhile, Harris won just 226 electoral college votes.

However, the former vice president said that Trump’s behaviour is similar to a “tyrant” rather than an elected official.

“Democracy sustains capitalism.

“Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And right now, we are dealing with – as I called him at my speech on the ellipse – a tyrant.

“We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now under Donald Trump.

“And these titans of industry are not speaking up,” she said.

During the 2024 campaign, Harris described her opponent as a “fascist” who had become “increasingly unhinged and unstable”.

At the time, the former senator from California was pointing to comments made by John Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff.

According to Kelly, Trump had suggested that Adolf Hitler “did some good things” and that he wanted generals like the Nazis.

Now, as Trump discusses about running for a third term in office, Harris is calling for American billionaires and business owners to stand up to the president’s “fragile ego”.

“But at some point, they’ve got to stand up for the sake of the people who rely on all of these institutions to have integrity and to, at some point, be the guardrails against a tyrant who is using the federal government to execute his whim and fancy because of a fragile ego,” Harris told Maddow.

The former vice president appeared on the MSNBC show to promote her new book, 107 Days, which offers readers a firsthand account of her presidential run.

The book previously made headlines when an excerpt about Harris’s pick for her vice president went viral online.

Harris had wrote that the former transport secretary had been her first choice for vice president when she began campaigning for the presidency last year.

However, she eventually chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz after deciding that choosing Buttigieg, a gay man, was a “risk”.

“We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. And I think Pete also knew that — to our mutual sadness,” she wrote.

In response, Buttigieg said that Harris needed to give Americans “more credit.”

“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” he added.

Harris has previously confirmed that she will not be standing to become governor of her home state of California in 2026, sparking speculation that she may run for the presidency once again in 2028.