(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) In an upcoming book, two New York Times reporters reveal that Vice President Kamala Harris sent her chief of staff to scold President Joe Biden’s advisers because she felt disrespected by White House aides, Politico reported.
“Some of Harris’s advisers believed the president’s almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved,” Martin and Burns wrote in This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.
“Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious,” they continued.
Simon & Schuster have set the book’s publication for May 3, 2002.
Several controversies have created tension in the Biden-Harris administration, including a Vogue magazine cover that Harris found disrespectful, perceived slights in decorum, and the volatile policy assignments that Biden has given Harris.
Harris objected to the cover photo, in which she wore Converse shoes, skinny jeans, and a blazer, that Vogue chose for a profile piece, titled “Madam Vice President!: Kamala Harris and the New America.”
Vogue also released the same story with a cover photo, which Harris preferred, that showed her in a blue blazer from the waist up.
“Harris was wounded. She felt belittled by the magazine, asking aides: Would Vogue depict another world leader this way?” Martin and Burns wrote.
Harris had her press secretary Symone Sanders contact Vogue editor Anna Wintour about the profile picture. Wintour said she chose the picture because it made Harris “relatable.”
Then Harris’s chief of staff Tina Flournoy contacted Biden officials about the picture.
“The Biden adviser told Flournoy that this was not the time to be going to war with Vogue over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue,” Martin and Burns wrote. “Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems.”
In another instance, Harris sent Flournoy to complain to Biden adviser Anita Dunn that White House aides did not stand for Harris when she came into the room as they did for Biden.
“The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,” Martin and Burns wrote.
When the administration began, Harris wanted a low-profile diplomatic assignment to Nordic nations and the freedom to give her own foreign policy speech.
“White House aides rejected the idea and privately mocked it,” Martin and Burns wrote. “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.”
The Biden administration instead assigned her to the Southern border, calling her the “border czar.”
“Harris was resigned to the assignment,” Martin and Burns wrote, adding that Harris “did not hesitate to chide Biden for characterizing her assignment in those terms.”
More recently, Biden assigned Harris to the situation in Ukraine right before Russia invaded.
