Last year Vice President Kamala Harris appeared in countless stories about dysfunction within her office and tensions with President Joe Biden.
Harris has faded from the headlines since last fall, according to Google Trends.
But that may change.
On Sunday, The New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin went on NBC News’ Meet the Press to promote his upcoming tell-all book This Will Not Pass, a historical account of Biden’s first year as president.
Martin devoted much of his airtime to the vice president’s apparent inferiority complex.
In one excerpt, the reporter 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. …
When Harris walked into a room, the White House staff did not stand up the way their did for Biden. …
The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect.
Chuck Todd asked Martin what Harris did about it. According to Martin, Harris’s office even called a meeting with Biden’s staff about this issue.
Martin said,
The chief of staff to Kamala Harris telephoned the West Wing and told a senior adviser of the West Wing to Biden, “The VP has noticed this, and she would like folks to stand, staff members to stand, when she enters the room.
This pulls back, I think, the curtain on what this White House is really like. The tensions are deep, and they are real, what’s going on in the VP’s office and the West Wing.
Martin even acknowledged the perception of Harris as disorganized… and her murky prospects in future elections.
He said:
Obviously, the public image is what it is, but this is an ongoing challenge.
And what is hovering over all this… is ’24. Is Biden going to run again, and if not, is it going to be VP Harris? That is the mood music hanging over the entire Democratic Party here, as well as Biden’s poor numbers.
We have a story that’s going to be today on The New York Times website that’s, for the first time, going to a reveal a number of memos and polling memorandums [sic] and decks that show the course of Biden’s decline over 2021 and the urgent warnings his pollster offered, at the White House, to stop that decline.
Martin devoted more of his airtime to last year’s Capitol riot and to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
He’s been on a press tour to promote the book. Last month, he and his co-writer made waves for publishing a leaked phone call alongside a book excerpt on the Times website. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California accused the Times of “profiting from manufactured political intrigue” in a statement at the time.
“It’s a deeply reported book,” Meet The Press host Chuck Todd said. “Heck of a book!”
Watch the full segment here —
The Horn editorial team