Vice President Kamala Harris feels increasingly isolated inside the White House as her approval ratings plummet — with the first female veep believing she’s not getting the same support given to other members of the Biden administration, according to a detailed new report.
“It’s hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a white man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves,” a former Harris aide told CNN, which based its report on interviews with nearly three dozen insiders.
The ex-staffer was referring to the Biden administration springing to defend Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for taking paternity leave amid the global supply chain crisis. Buttigieg is considered a potential challenger to Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination either in 2024 or 2028.
that has reached an “exhausted stalemate,” according the network.
At a time when the president would usually be expected to promote his vice president as a future replacement, Biden has instead been sidelining Harris as a potential liability, the report said.
For their part, Harris’ allies are reportedly frustrated with the president for dumping politically fraught issues in her lap — including, infamously, the ongoing illegal immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border. “They’re consistently sending her out there on losing issues in the wrong situations for her skill set,” summed up one former top Harris aide to CNN.
Other aides say the vice president should have asked for better-defined responsibilities at the start of the administration, but has not done so out of fear of appearing disloyal to the president.
In March, Biden announced that Harris would lead the administration’s talks with Mexico and Central American countries about slowing the tide of migrants crossing the US border.
However, with the exception of a rocky visit to Mexico and Guatemala in early June and a brief trip to El Paso at the end of that month, Harris has largely avoided the issue in public. Last month — while Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas met with their Mexican counterparts about the issue — Harris was in New Jersey to promote Biden’s multitrillion-dollar social spending bill.
Insiders told CNN the West Wing has been especially bothered by Harris’ handling of the border issue. The veep’s trip to Mexico and Guatemala was overshadowed by a disastrous interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, in which Harris responded to Holt by noting that she hadn’t yet been to the frontier region by chuckling and joking: “And I haven’t been to Europe.”
Immigration advocates have also expressed disappointment with Harris. Fernando García, executive director of Border Network for Human Rights, told CNN that he was optimistic Harris would take action, but she instead just “disappeared.”
“We haven’t heard any substantive messaging push for better immigration policies,” he told CNN. “We haven’t seen her leadership.”
CNN reported that those close to Harris are miffed at the White Ho… (Read more)
