Biden ‘annoyed’ by complaints from Harris’s husband over tough vice presidential assignments
Katherine Doyle
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President Joe Biden grew “annoyed” upon discovering that Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband had complained about her policy assignments, fueling questions inside the White House about the vice president’s inner circle.
Learning that second gentleman Doug Emhoff had griped about Harris’s portfolio, “Biden was annoyed,” a forthcoming book by Chris Whipple obtained by West Wing Playbook reported. “He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president.”
Biden described Harris as “a work in progress,” a friend of the president told Whipple.
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Skepticism around Harris’s performance wasn’t limited to Biden. According to The Fight of His Life, a senior White House adviser griped that “[Harris’s] inner circle didn’t serve her well in the presidential campaign — and they are ill-serving her now.”
Politico reported last month that efforts by Harris’s husband to box out the vice president’s potential future rivals prompted “eye-rolling” inside the White House. During the Democratic nominating contest for 2020, Harris’s presidential campaign ran aground amid infighting between top advisers.
According to West Wing Playbook, Harris declined to answer a question from Whipple about “turmoil and morale problems among your staff going back to your time as California attorney general.” Biden and Harris agreed only to written questions for the book.
Harris’s handling of her portfolio assignments has prompted questions inside the White House. Like Harris, Biden took the lead on foreign policy in the Central American region as vice president in the Obama administration amid a migration crisis.
Biden tasked Harris early on in his administration with overseeing efforts to slow the tide of immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, a politically fraught assignment that saw an aide to the vice president quickly push back against the idea that she would be “doing the border.”
Later, amid backlash from an interview in which Harris compared her decision not to visit the southern border to not yet visiting Europe, the White House floated a visit.
Another portfolio assignment came at Harris’s urging, according to the book.
Whipple writes that Harris had “begged” Biden to take the lead on voting rights, an issue that largely faded from view as the midterm elections got underway, and Democrats abandoned the push in Congress after the Senate failed to advance legislation to override state laws.
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Whipple’s book, set to publish on Jan. 17, features extensive interviews with the president’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, and other senior advisers.