We did a post a little bit ago about an upcoming book that alleges that first lady Jill Biden was not happy that her husband picked Kamala Harris, who had attacked him as a segregationist during the primary debates, to be his running mate. The book is “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, and we’re getting some juicy excerpts today. This one comes from Martin himself and involves Harris’ feeling getting hurt because White House staffers didn’t stand when she entered the room as they did for President Biden.
Politico talks about a bit of drama when Harris was displeased with the photo of her Vogue chose to use for its digital cover, thinking it did not depict her as a world leader. There was also drama over those staffers not standing at attention:
Politico writes:
“Some of Harris’s advisers believed the president’s almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved,” Martin and Burns write. “Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious.”
At one point, Harris dispatched [incoming chief of staff Tina] Flournoy to talk to top Biden adviser ANITA DUNN to convey displeasure that White House staff was not standing up for Harris when she entered the room the way they did for Biden. “The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,” according to the excerpt.
Dunn told West Wing Playbook that she wasn’t “going to comment except to say that everyone in the West Wing has a high degree of respect for the Vice President and the hard work she is doing for this President and our country. Particularly me.”
New: @VP was stung by what she saw as the lack of respect shown to her by WH aides who failed to stand when she entered the room–and her chief of staff conveyed that displeasure to the West Wing.@AlexThomp on this + lots more from THIS WILL NOT PASS:https://t.co/x8xkvatz0d
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) March 22, 2022
