The former top Democrat who quit the party after then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump says her compassion for President Joe Biden — whom GOP candidate Donald Trump crushed in their one debate — dissipated quickly.
Indeed, Lindy Li felt pity for the ailing commander in chief. But as a top rainmaker on the party’s finance committee, she had pulled in millions for Harris’ reelection bid only to watch campaign officials waste it. That made her furious.
Li bolted the party to become a Republican in December 2024, about a month after she divulged that Harris campaign officials lied about internal polling that showed Trump would likely defeat her.
The latest from Li is detailed in a Daily Mail offering about her new book, Unburdened: A Former Democrat Insider’s Shocking Account of Political Power, Betrayal, and Party Collapse, which hits bookshelves tomorrow.
Leaving the Party Like Leaving a Cult
In December, as The New American reported, Li described leaving the party as similar to one’s leaving a cult.
After Li praised incoming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and criticized the party as having the “stench of loser,” party confreres unleashed a demonic attack.
“They called me a whore, they called me the ‘C-word,’” she told Fox News. “They asked for me to be deported.”
Understandably, Li wondered why she should stay in a party that touts diversity but expects total subservience to its woke Bug Brain. She said the reaction to her remarks exposed the true face of her party.
“All these so-called Democrats, the party of inclusion, the party of diversity — masks off,” she said:
And it’s even worse because they pretend to occupy the moral high ground. They pretend to be so loving and caring and embracing of diversity but all of a sudden, when I dare to utter any criticisms of the goddess Kamala Harris, I get ostracized. Me, after having raised tens of millions of dollars for the party.
She said “even questioning” the Democratic Party is “terrifying” because it’s “like leaving a cult.”
Moving Right
The party’s far-left nutjobbery, she said, is “accelerating my rightward shift.”
Even worse, said Li, she was accused of being a communist spy. “I don’t want this nonsense. It’s just crazy, and honestly they’re shrinking their tent.… They’re pushing me to bring my tens of millions of dollars that I’ve raised and can continue to raise to a different team that treats me better — that treats me with just common decency, that doesn’t call me a communist spy,” she said.
“I don’t want to be a part of this nonsense anymore,” she continued:
I want to be a part of the team that says men are men and women are women, and that men shouldn’t play in women’s sports.
Before that scorching evaluation, Li disclosed that the Harris campaign’s internal polling showed that she couldn’t defeat Trump.
“We were told definitely that she had a shot at winning — it wasn’t even a shot,” she said:
I was even told that Pennsylvania was looking good, that we would win 3-4 swing states.
That didn’t happen. Trump won all seven swing states.
On election night, Li continued, “we were told that we were going to win Iowa.” But Trump crushed Harris in the Hawkeye State 56 percent to 42.7 percent.
The Debate
Li told the Daily Mail what happened the night that Biden debated Trump. She was one of the first people to speak to the ailing president after the debate, and was devastated.
“I was shaking… like, I cannot believe this happened,” Li wrote. “I knew he was slowing down, that’s no secret, but I didn’t know he was going to face plant,” Li told the website:
I didn’t know it was going to be an outright collapse. It was just embarrassing [and] painful to watch.
The debate dumbfounded her.
“Speaking to the President afterwards, she felt sorrow at the diminished figure before her,” the website continued:
“I had so much compassion for him, I didn’t mention the debate — I consoled him,” she told the Daily Mail. “[I felt] love and pity — actual pity — and that is not the feeling you want to have for your President.”
New Book
In her book, Li describes Biden as “shamelessness in human form” and Harris as the “Cackle Queen.”
What Li disclosed when she left the party she reprises in her book, the website continued.
“[People] were donating to the campaign because of their faith in me, and that propelled my need for accountability afterwards, because I felt like it was a personal betrayal,” she writes.
As she has been for some time, Li was also furious about the donor money wasted on “fripperies such as the Vice President’s hairstyle, celebrity endorsers and frivolous gift baskets,” as the website described.
Millions Wasted
After the election, as The New American reported, The New York Times revealed that the campaign spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks — $100 million every seven days, or $14.3 million every 24 hours. Noted the paper:
The frenzied spending has led to second-guessing among some Democrats, including whether investing in celebrity-fueled events with stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé was more ostentatious than effective.
Another big expenditure was the $1 million paid to Oprah Winfrey’s production company.
Harris burned through $494 million from July 21 through October 16, 2024. That was spent “on producing and buying media, a category that includes both television and digital ads. The total sum through the election is said to be closer to $600 million,” the Times reported.
Harris outspent Trump two to one, the Washington Examiner reported, spending $654 million to Trump’s $378 million from July 22 through the election.
Li said donors were “p***ed” because they spent $2.5 billion to elect Harris, and “it’s my responsibility … to ask what the hell happened with that money. Why did we spend … millions of dollars on five-star hotels for campaign staffers? Why did we spend $500,000 essentially bribing Al Sharpton moments before he interviewed Kamala? These are legitimate questions, but no, in the cult you can’t ask questions.”
Like many, Li claims that First Lady “Dr.” Jill and son Hunter knew Biden was unfit to serve another term, the Daily Mail noted. First Lady Jill even thought Biden might have suffered a stroke on debate night. But mother and son enjoyed the power their relationship with Biden conferred and therefore did what they could to hide his obviously declining mental capacity.
Avers Li in the book:
The campaign had long since narrowed to a single, obsessive priority: Shielding the fragile ego of one aging leader rather than safeguarding the republic he swore to serve.
