President Joe Biden was reportedly exasperated with the job performance of Vice President Kamala Harris last year, describing her as a “work in progress,” a new book claims.
“The Fight of His Life” by Chris Whipple describes Biden complaining to an acquaintance about Harris, describing her as a “work in progress” after he found out that Harris’s husband Douglas Emhoff had been grumbling about the jobs assigned to his wife, according to Politico.
Harris’s tasks included the southern border file, during a historic surge of illegal immigration, and helping to ensure Congress passed a major overhaul to election laws and voting rights.
According to the book, “Biden was annoyed… He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president – and she’d begged him for the voting rights assignment.”
The book implies that Biden’s admission of frustration with the Vice President occurred after June 2021, when he assigned the voting rights job to Harris. The measure eventually failed to pass the Senate.
Responding to the allegations, White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson told Politico that the White House would not be confirming or denying any of the book’s allegations.
“There will be no shortage of books written about the administration containing a wide variety of claims. We don’t plan to engage in confirmations or denials when it comes to the specifics of those claims. The author did not give us a chance to verify the materials that are attributed here,” Patterson said.
But Whipple, a highly regarded author on White House issues, told the news outlet that Biden’s senior aides would not share insider accounts for the book, making confirming facts difficult. Harris, as well as Biden, would also only answer written questions.
“This is the most battened-down, disciplined, leak-proof White House in modern times,” Whipple said.