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The White House’s West Wing and the building where most of Vice President Kamala Harris’s staffers are separated by a narrow alleyway, but right-wing media makes it seem like there is a giant chasm between her team and President Joe Biden’s.
Over the last few weeks, prominent personalities have suggested that there’s been a complete breach between Harris and Biden, driven by the latter’s alleged fury over being defenestrated from the Democratic ticket in the wake of his historically dismal debate performance against Donald Trump.
In this bizarre rendering of events, everything Biden has done in the last few weeks has been part of a deliberate strategy to undermine Harris and keep her from winning the presidency.
Biden jokingly donning a MAGA hat during a 9/11 commemoration in Pennsylvania? Meant to be a tacit endorsement of the man he has spent the last four-plus years calling a threat to the foundations of the American republic.
Telling reporters he spoke with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the run-up to Hurricane Milton hitting the Sunshine State last week? A brushback pitch intended to make Harris look ineffectual.
And Biden’s first-ever outing in the White House briefing room for a brief Q&A session after his administration brokered a temporary end to a dockworker strike that could’ve crippled the American economy just before an election? A deliberate effort to steal Harris’s thunder by getting in the way of one of her campaign events.
The idea of the White House and the Vice President feuding while the Veep seeks the presidency isn’t a new one.
When then-Vice President Al Gore was running against then-Texas Governor George W Bush during the 2000 presidential election, there was tension between the Clinton White House and the Gore campaign over Clinton’s behavior and the scandal that led to him being just the second American president to face an impeachment trial in the Senate.
But there’s a problem with the talk of a Biden-Harris rift: It’s not true.
Biden, The Independent understands, is “all in” on the Harris campaign and has been kept abreast of developments as she has taken over the campaign operation he built before standing aside in July.
He’s expected to make campaign appearances in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania during the closing weeks of the election, including one in Philadelphia tonight.
And Harris campaign sources aren’t ruling out the possibility of Biden joining two of the the other three living Democratic presidents as they all look towards adding one more member to the world’s most exclusive club.
So next time some MAGA influencer claims there have been fistfights in the West Wing between Biden and Harris staffers - it should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
