Kamala Harris Reportedly Irked by What Biden Staffers Did When She Walked Into the Room
A new book revealed that Vice President Kamala Harris and her camp were miffed that President Joe Biden’s aides did not show Harris the respect she believed she deserved.
The book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” was authored by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns of The New York Times.
The book painted a saga of resentment on the part of Harris and evaporating toleration on the part of Biden’s team.
“Some of Harris’s advisers believed the president’s almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved,” the book said, according to Politico.
“Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious,” the authors wrote.
The book said Harris sent chief of staff Tina Flournoy to talk to Biden adviser Anita Dunn to complain that White House staff failed to stand when Harris entered a room, although they did for Biden.
“The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,” according to the book excerpt.
Harris also wanted some softballs in her policy portfolio, the book explained.
The vice president’s “staff floated the possibility of the vice president overseeing relations with the Nordic countries — a low-risk diplomatic assignment that might have helped Harris get adjusted to the international stage in welcoming venues like Oslo and Copenhagen,” the book said.
“White House aides rejected the idea and privately mocked it. More irritating to Biden aides was when they learned the vice president wanted to plan a major speech to outline her view of foreign policy. Biden aides vetoed the idea.”
Instead, Biden, who as vice president dealt with the Northern Triangle countries in Central America — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — gave them to Harris to deal with.
Coming at a time when record numbers of illegal immigrants were entering the U.S., Harris’s staff thought the assignment was a loser.
“Harris was resigned to the assignment,” the book claimed, but she hated the term “border czar” and “did not hesitate to chide Biden for characterizing her assignment in those terms.”
In a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in mid-April, Biden announced he had given the vice president the job of handling immigration. Harris, Biden said, would do “a hell of a job,” according to the book.
“The vice president corrected him at once,” the book continued. “Excuse me, she said, it’s the Northern Triangle — not immigration.”
KAMALA HARRIS: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time…there is such great significance to the passage of time.” pic.twitter.com/jUsnyNiSpB
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2022
The book noted that Harris had begun filing grievances about her treatment even before she took office, when Vogue pictured her in Converse sneakers and skinny jeans.
“Harris was wounded. She felt belittled by the magazine, asking aides: Would Vogue depict another world leader this way?” the book explained.
When Flournoy was sent to ask a Biden aide for help battling the magazine, she was told that “this was not the time to be going to war with Vogue over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue.”
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