Vice President Kamala Harris quickly learned not to come between President Biden and his negotiations with Congress, when the president once snapped at her so harshly even Republican senators in the meeting were shocked.
In a meeting last May, Biden tried to persuade Republican lawmakers to support $1 trillion in infrastructure spending.
And while Biden was ready for a compromise, Harris thought the bill was skimpy.
‘Harris thought that there was something missing from the conversation,’ New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote in their book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future. She began turning the conversation toward Democratic priorities, including family and social spending, which were originally included in the larger Build Back Better bill.
She ‘began to make the case for a larger package than the one Republicans seemed to have in mind.’
‘Biden dismissed her comment immediately,’ the authors wrote, in so harsh a tone ‘that even the Republican senators were taken aback.’
Biden was typically ‘scrupulously respectful’ of his second-in-command, but the moment revealed that infrastructure negotiations were his and his alone.
Vice President Kamala Harris quickly learned not to come between President Biden and his negotiations with Congress, when the president once snapped at her so aggressively even Republican senators in the meeting were shocked
‘Biden dismissed her comment immediately,’ the authors wrote, in so harsh a tone ‘that even the Republican senators were taken aback’
In other meetings Harris kept quiet, and there was less friction.
The reporters wrote of one meeting soon after Biden and Harris took office that the White House set up with governors to discuss coronavirus relief.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said that Biden took charge and was eager to work with the governors. But he said that Harris’s role in the meeting was ‘very strange.’
‘Harris did not say a word,’ Hogan reportedly said, leaving him to question whether she was ‘just being deferential to the president — didn’t want to step on him.’
Harris reportedly felt belittled by the president’s staff, but Biden’s team did not take her concerns seriously.
‘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. ‘Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious.’
Harris even sent out chief of staff Tina Fluornoy to scold Biden’s staffers for not standing up when she entered the room, the way they do for the president. ‘The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,’ according to the book.
Biden tasked Harris with addressing immigration – and the vice president took opportunities to share her dissatisfaction with the role.
According to the book, Harris’ aides felt that the task of addressing the southern border crisis, in any way, was politically undesirable and wanted the vice president to have a softball foreign policy assignment – like overseeing relations with Nordic countries.
‘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 authors wrote.
They added that the prospect of overseeing Nordic countries was ‘rejected’ by White House aides and even ‘privately mocked.’
‘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,’ they added in the book. ‘Biden aides vetoed the idea.’
‘Why should a vice president have their own independently articulated view of global affairs?’ Biden’s team questioned.
The border crisis was transferred from Biden’s portfolio to Harris’ shortly after inauguration.
After a trip to Guatemala and Mexico that drew criticism in the press, Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain ‘reminded her she was hardly the first vice president to endure tough coverage.’
Biden and Harris had reportedly said little about the portfolio she would take on in the run-up to Inauguration Day.
And once in office, a senator close to Harris claimed the vice president’s frustration level was ‘up in the stratosphere’ as she realized her political flight path looked like a ‘slow rolling Greek tragedy.’
* story by Dailymail.com
