President Joe Biden’s team quietly blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for her disastrous first year in office, a new book reveals.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield privately revealed her feelings about Harris’ problems.
The report is revealed in the book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.
From the book:
In private, Bedingfeld had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris’s political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: Her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco. Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president’s staff.
Bedingfeld protested the report in a statement to Politico’s Playbook but she did not deny it.
“The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know,” Bedingfield said, describing Harris as “a force in this administration.”
The book also reveals Biden personally addressed his senior staff, as more negative stories were published about Harris, telling them he would fire them if they were responsible.
Harris and Biden, the book says, have a “friendly but not close” relationship as the vice president continues to churn through staff in search of a better response from the country.