Vice President Kamala Harris’s “gamesmanship” against her staff has led to a long-standing pattern of dysfunction, prompting questions about her capabilities under pressure, a new book reports.
A former aide said Harris engaged in “really unnecessary gamesmanship” with staff, behavior the person attributed to “deep, deep insecurity,” reports a forthcoming book by Chris Whipple obtained by the Washington Examiner.
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The staffer, who spent years working for Harris, claimed she “refused to do the kind of preparation that you need to do before going public on a hardcore policy matter. And then she became incensed and outraged when things wouldn’t go the way she thought they were supposed to. There was a lot of magical thinking.”
Reports of turmoil have plagued Harris’s vice presidential office, with her chief of staff, communications director, press secretary, and other aides departing within the first 18 months.
Former aides allege a long-standing pattern of poor treatment toward staff.
“I think it’s helpful for people to know that this is not new, and it will inhibit any administration that she is the leader of,” said the former staffer, according to The Fight of His Life, a book about the first years of President Joe Biden’s presidency.
The person disputed that former aides criticizing Harris were targeting her because of her race or gender. “When somebody raises an issue about Kamala, everybody’s like, you don’t want to see black women succeed. That’s completely backward. Everybody who goes to work for Kamala, by definition, wants to see her succeed. That’s why you take these jobs,” she said.
Another former Harris staffer, Gil Duran, told Whipple that Harris’s team as California attorney general frequently dealt “with her dysfunction.” Duran has criticized Harris publicly since the start of the administration. He calls her “impossible to manage” in Whipple’s book.
“The amount of stress she created by constantly being impossible to manage and taking out all her stresses on staff — usually women, or people who were not in great positions of authority — was just kind of unbearable,” Duran said.
He resigned less than six months into the job.
Harris declined to answer a question from Whipple about “turmoil and morale problems among your staff going back to your time as California attorney general,” according to the author.
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Biden and Harris agreed only to written questions for the book.
Biden described Harris as “a work in progress,” a friend of the president told Whipple.
