President Joe Biden saw relatively few leaks during his first year, yet among the most visible cracks in his White House were reports that Kamala Harris’s staff were unhappy with their treatment and the vice president’s long portfolio of troubles.
President Joe Biden has threatened to fire White House staffers who were found to have leaked negative information about Vice President Kamala Harris following her utter gaffe of a trip to Guatemala, reports from a new book on Tuesday said.
As noted in the Politico Playbook Morning Report, there were relatively few media leaks in the first year of the Biden-Harris administration, especially compared to their Republican predecessors.
But a forthcoming book by two New York Times journalists appears to reveal discontent and frustration between the Biden and Harris teams that have forced even the president himself to intervene.
Among the top complaints from Harris employees during their first year in office was a reportedly “impossible” portfolio.
The president has repeatedly been accused of assigning critical but overly broad tasks to his deputy, including dealing with the southwestern border crisis, voting rights, leading a pro-union task force, and chairing the National Space Council, among others.
But Biden’s communications director Kate Bedingfield privately blamed Harris herself for failing to live up to the bar set for her, according to It Won’t Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.
“Privately, Bedingfeld began to note that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris’s political career that she had failed to live up to sky-high expectations: her Senate office was dirty and her presidential campaign was a fiasco,” the journalists wrote.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “the problem isn’t with the vice president’s office.”
A Biden aide criticized the report in a statement to Politico: “The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to verify the facts of this unauthorized claim tells you what you need to know. Vice President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward.”
Biden and Harris share a “friendly but not close” relationship, the book’s authors write, describing their regular dinners as lacking “real depth of personal and political intimacy.”
The president reportedly summoned employees to the Oval Office after the publication ran an article in June that described Harris’s office as an “offensive environment.”
Biden warned senior staffers that if “he finds any of them spreading negative stories about the vice president,” then “they will quickly become ex-employees.”
In the book, the couple’s relationship is described as “friendly but not close”.
“There was no real depth of personal and political intimacy in their weekly dinners,” the authors wrote—a marked departure from the president’s characteristic warmth.
In an upcoming report on the Biden White House, Harris herself is also depicted as “disillusioned” with her current position.
Martin and Burns write that a “senator close to” Harris described her “frustration level as ‘above the stratosphere'”.
An unnamed MP compared the vice president’s “political decline” to a “sluggish Greek tragedy.”
“Her approval numbers were even lower than Biden’s, and other Democrats were already eyeing the 2024 race if Biden declines to run,” the authors write.
It was after reports of dysfunction and “abusive environment” appeared in Harris’ office in late June following her trip to Guatemala that Biden warned employees that they would be “former” employees if leaks continued.
Harris lost her tenth employee on Monday with the departure of National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney.
This comes after news broke last week that Harris’ deputy spokesman Sabrina Singh was leaving the administration.
During her years as a freshman senator from California, Harris was praised for her prosecutorial skills, which were demonstrated during congressional hearings.
In that first term, Harris entered the 2020 presidential race. Initial enthusiasm for her candidacy quickly faded amid a crowded Democratic primary, and she withdrew in December 2019, citing a lack of funds.
New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns even quote Biden’s public relations director as blaming Harris herself for dysfunction.
And once Biden took office, Harris’ groundbreaking status as the first black, Asian, and female vice president was quickly overshadowed by poor poll results for both her and the president, as well as a series of public gaffes.
During her trip to Guatemala in June, Harris sparked outrage among immigration activists when she told people during a speech, “Don’t come” to the US.
Later that month, Harris’ aide was quoted by Politico describing her office: “It’s an unhealthy environment and people often feel bad. It’s not a place where people feel supported, but a place where they’re treated like shit.”
She was ridiculed Monday for a seemingly meandering speech in which she referred to “the passage of time” four times during an event to promote high-speed internet in Louisiana.
“The governor and I took a tour of the local library and talked about the importance of the passage of time. Right? The meaning of the passage of time, she said.
“So if you think about it, the passage of time matters a lot in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires, what we need to do to create these jobs,” Harris continued.
She continued: “And the passage of time makes such a big difference when we think about a day in the life of our children and what it means for the future of our nation, depending on whether they have the necessary resources. realize your God-given talent.