Kamala Harris Reportedly Hates Border Czar Job, Wanted Low-Risk Assignment Instead

A new book purporting to shed light on tensions between Vice-President Kamala Harris and her boss Joe Biden suggests that she loathes her assignment as head honcho in charge of fixing the crisis at the border with Mexico, and wanted something easier, such as overseeing relations with the Nordic states.

The book, ‘This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future’, written by NYT reporters Johnathan Martin and Alex Burns, accuses the President’s “almost entirely white inner circle” of failing to show Harris “the respect she deserved”, with aides reportedly ‘privately mocking’ her over the idea that she oversee ties with Scandinavia.

“Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious,” noted the book, excerpts of which were published by Politico ahead of a scheduled 3 May release.

Harris has not relished the tough job of tackling the border crisis, handed to her in February 2021, and has not hesitated to show it in private conversations, according to the journalists. In a meeting of Congressional Black Caucus leaders in April of 2021, Biden reportedly suggested that Harris would do “a hell of a job” on immigration, with Harris immediately jumping in brusquely to correct him: “Excuse me, it’s the Northern Triangle – not immigration,” she said, referring to the Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. An economic crisis, gang violence and rampant human and drug smuggling has made these three countries the source of many of the immigrants seeking to make their way to the United States.

Biden’s aides have reportedly been frustrated by the Harris team’s obsession with trivial “first-world problems” - such as her Vogue magazine cover photo - instead of substantive policy matters, according to the book.

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However, the book also claims that Biden gathered his staff last June and threatened to fire anyone who leaked negative stories about Harris, around the time that stories were emerging that her office was a toxic place to work. If “he found that any of them was stirring up negative stories about the vice-president,” they “would quickly be former staff,” the authors wrote.

The White House has dismissed the book and its revelations, with Biden's communications director Kate Bedingfield - whom the book cited as having described Harris as having “fallen short of sky-high expectations” - saying the tell-all was a work of fiction. “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. Vice-President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward,” Bedingfield said in a statement.

Harris has faced an uphill battle as vice-president amid tanking approval ratings, a revolving door office, with her national security adviser, Nancy McEldowney becoming the 10th staffer to quit on Monday, and a never-ending series of gaffes, goofs and flubs during her public appearances. Harris’s bizarre repetition of the phrase “the significance of the passage of time” four times in four sentences in a speech on Monday also immediately became a source of meme material for her detractors, including the Republicans.

Expiration Date?

23 March 2022, 04:04 GMT