Biden Aides Rip Kamala Harris Book: ‘She Was Simply Not Good at the Job’
Former aides to Joe Biden are blasting Vice President Kamala Harris after excerpts from her upcoming memoir — 107 Days — surfaced this week, with several dismissing her complaints as an attempt to shift blame for her own failures.
According to Axios reporter Alex Thompson, Biden’s team “reacted with rage” to Harris’ claims that the White House left her out to dry during her turbulent vice presidency and failed 2024 presidential bid.
In the book, Harris alleges that Biden’s communications team rarely defended her from negative coverage. “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,” Harris writes.
But Biden aides fired back, insisting the real problem was Harris herself.
“Vice President Harris was simply not good at the job,” one former White House official told Axios. “She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration’s key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was.”
Another aide mocked Harris’ suggestion that she should have pushed Biden to step aside sooner in 2024. “I’m not sure the very robust defense of not having the courage to speak up in the moment about Biden running is quite as persuasive as she thinks it is. If this is her attempt at political absolution: Lots of luck in your senior year.”
Harris also claimed she was deliberately set up to fail by being labeled the administration’s “border czar.” A former Biden aide flatly rejected that narrative. “On the border stuff in particular, I’d also say if she had spent a fraction of the time and energy doing the work that she did on complaining about how she was perceived, she would have been perceived a whole lot better.”
Still, some voices offered a softer assessment. Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain said Harris did a “good job” as vice president, while another aide admitted, “We all know that the Biden folks treated her and her team like s—. We never thought she would actually say anything. The staffers across a range of ages and positions that I’m talking to are proud of her.”
The book excerpts underline just how bitter the split remains between Biden-world and Harris allies after their failed partnership — with Biden loyalists blasting Harris as incompetent and Harris loyalists accusing Biden’s team of sabotage.