Former Vice President Kamala Harris has implied then-President Joe Biden’s inner circle allowed her to take the fall for the disastrous border crisis — as she claimed they threw her under the bus when her popularity started to outgrow his.
In a scathing excerpt of her forthcoming book, Harris — who was tasked with overseeing the immigration crisis — suggested that Biden’s team added “fuel” to the negative narratives that were being peddled by critics at the time.
“When Republicans mischaracterized my role as ‘border czar,’ no one in the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved,” she wrote in an excerpt of “107 Days” obtained by The Atlantic on Wednesday.
“Instead, I shouldered the blame for the porous border, an issue that had proved intractable for Democratic and Republican administrations alike,” Harris continued.
“No one around the president advocated, Give her something she can win with.”
She claimed, too, that the White House failed to defend her publicly when negative stories arose.
“They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible,” she wrote.
“Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me,” Harris added.
“And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more.”
Elsewhere, the ex-veep went on to suggest that Biden’s aides were less than impressed when polls started to show her popularity was rising during his disastrous 2024 campaign.
“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital,” she wrote.
“It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him,” she said. “His team didn’t get it.”
