Staff

Tensions with President Biden’s team dating back to before the inauguration. Displeasure over the White House staff not standing up for her when she entered the room as they did for the President. A Vogue cover photo she felt was not an adequate depiction for an incoming vice-president. All revelations that are part of a new book set to hit bookstores in May detailing a relationship between Harris and the West Wing that according to the book, has been uneasy at best.

Written by two New York times reporters, the forthcoming book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, was intended as an authoritative account of how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden’s first year in the White House. But in charting the first year of the Biden presidency, the reports about Harris paint a less than flattering picture of the nation’s first Black, Asian and female vice-president.

The relationship between Harris and the president was described as ‘friendly, but not close.’ Yet, as reports of tension and dysfunction surfaced and staff turnover in the VP offices made headlines, the book asserted that Biden threatened to fire anyone who went to the press with negative information about the vice president.

Other revelations in the book

• First Lady Jill Biden was not pleased with her husband’s selection of Harris as his running mate due in part to her attack on Biden during a 2019 debate.
• VP Kamala Harris felt disrespected by Vogue editor Anna Wintour for choosing to place on the cover of the magazine a picture of her wearing skinny jeans and converse shoes that Wintour believed made her more ‘relatable’. Vogue subsequently decided to sell a limited-edition digital inaugural issue with Harris in a powder-blue suit.
• Harris was reportedly worried that Biden’ staff looked down on her, fixating “on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious”.
• Harris did not want to be restricted to a few subjects mainly associated with women and Black Americans.