White House enters damage control mode after reports of dysfunction in Kamala Harris’ office

news7g11/15/2021

4 4 minutes read

White House enters damage control mode after reports of dysfunction in Kamala Harris' office

Two people close to Harris’ team said several individuals inside the vice president’s office were Disappointed with what they see as a dysfunctional activity that is sometimes hampered by internal conflict. Those people said some of those angry comments were directed at Harris’ chief of staff, Tina Flournoy. Another source close to staff said there had been “challenges and difficulties” and had heard complaints about Flournoy from staff, but denied that it led to dysfunction or stress. is directly Flournoy’s fault.

Sabrina Singh, the vice president’s press secretary, told CNN in a statement that Harris is focused on her job.

“The Vice President and her office are focused on the Biden-Harris Administration agenda of building a middle-out and bottom-up, not top-down, economy for racial equity. Ethnicity is at the core of everything the Administration does, Singh said, to combat the existential threat of climate change and continue to protect the American people from the Covid-19 pandemic.

And White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday, “I would say that the vice president is an incredibly important partner to the President of the United States. She has a challenging job, a job. hard work and she has a great support team. people around her. But beyond that, I won’t have any further comment on those reports.”

However, conversations are currently underway in the West Wing about how to better support Harris’s team, a source close to the White House said.

That help from the West Wing is a sign the spiral could begin to affect Harris, who is widely seen as next to lead the Democratic Party – with the possibility of running for president as early as next year. 2024 if President Joe Biden decides not to seek re-election. Biden has said he intends to run for office.

Top White House officials and aides to the vice president went on record in defense of Harris and Flournoy, calling reports of infighting and dysfunction either overblown or simply untrue. And Harris’s allies and outside advisers — like influential adviser Minyon Moore and Democratic strategist Bakari Sellers — quickly took to Twitter, seeking to quell the criticism.

On Friday, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, a longtime friend of Flournoy, said in a statement to CNN: “Vice President Harris and her team have had the fastest and strongest start to the season. any Vice President I have ever seen She is delivering to the American people on immigration, small business, voting rights and economic growth. It’s obvious when you see them together in the Oval Office.”

“The results speak for themselves: reduced arrivals to the border from the Northern Triangle, improved vaccine equity, and increased economic opportunity for women. Anyone who has had the honor of working so closely with the The Vice President knows how much her talent and determination has made a difference in this administration,” Klain’s statement added.

As frustration surfaced this week and damage control began to kick in, the court-wide defense also added to the apparent concern within and around the Biden administration about the drama unfolding in the United States. Harris’s office. The latest reports are seen as part of a saga about staff infighting and low morale, which has followed Harris from Senate office to her presidential campaign and now vice president. .

An administration official described the West Wing’s current efforts as an effort to help resolve any issues any employees may have.

“Ron, Anita (Dunn), Cedric (Richmond), others, have certainly expressed their solidarity with our team, internally and externally,” the management official said.

But some of those efforts have actually helped bolster reports of employee dissatisfaction. Instead of denying the existence of morale complaints inside Harris’s office, Dunn – a senior White House adviser – tell Politico your complaints “not anywhere near what you’re describing” and admitted that “there may be people with a slightly hurt feeling towards her staff” after multiple employees was not told about her trip to the southern border in front of it is public announcement.

The departures of two top Harris officials have also set in motion a tumultuous story, although some officials insist the pair had always planned to leave the administration soon.

It didn’t help that Harris was fired for numerous missteps during her first few months in office, which began just weeks after she gave an interview to a West Virginia television station that made the moderate Democrat Sen. respect, Joe Manchin, praising. from the state. That tension peaked last month during her first international trip as vice president, a two-day visit to Guatemala and Mexico in which she likened not going to the border. nor visit Europe.

“Me, and I’ve never been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t – I don’t get what you’re doing,” Harris told NBC’s Lester Holt with a laugh when pressed for the truth. that she did not visit the US-Mexico border.

Trip to El Paso, Texas, last week without incident and some people close to Harris called reports alleging dysfunction overblown. But others told CNN the office was filled with frustration and sometimes infighting.

“I think people are just feeling overwhelmed,” a source close to the White House said of the dynamic in the vice president’s office.

“It’s clearly a tough place,” said the administration official, not just of the vice president’s office but of all administrative work, which operates with high levels of stress and pressure. “But for the most part, everyone is focused on the task.”

That official alleges that Flournoy is Harris’ property as her chief of staff, and a source close to Flournoy suggested that she kept Harris’s relationship tight, saying her role “being a janitor, it’s keeping the principal on duty, and it’s the one who has the final say before the principal makes a decision, so in that respect she’s doing the job she’s supposed to. do.” Several complaints were made in the media reporting that Flournoy had restricted access to Harris too much.

“There is no infighting between the teams,” the management official said. “The office is amalgamated as part of OVP’s larger goal. Everyone is working together to make sure she’s delivering on the tasks she’s been assigned.”

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