A new report citing numerous current and former associates of Vice President Kamala Harris paints the work atmosphere in her office as a “tense and at times dour” environment for employees.
Over 20 “current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden” spoke to Politico for the report on Harris’ office, in which multiple people point to the vice president herself as responsible for the “low morale” feeling.
“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” said one person with direct knowledge of Harris’ office. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s**t.”
The report also describes an office in disarray, with Harris’ recent trip to El Paso, Texas pointed to as just one example of a lack of communication and planning within the ranks. While the VP claimed the trip had always been planned, sources told Politico that Harris’ people were just as blindsided by the news as the public.
Symone Sanders, senior advisor and chief spokesperson for Harris, pushed back against the work environment allegations, defending the vice president’s chief of staff Tina Flournoy – whom many pointed to as creating the toxic mood – and saying people are only complaining because “they have hard jobs.”
“We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day. What I hear is that people have hard jobs and I’m like ‘welcome to the club,’” Sanders told Politico.
Sanders claims Flournoy has an “open-door” policy but, as a black woman, is held to a different standard.
Others, meanwhile, describe Flournoy as creating an unhealthy culture within the vice president’s office, quickly shooting down ideas and pitting employees against one another.
“People are cowards to do this this way,” she added about the chief of staff’s anonymous critics.
The report notes that the dysfunction in Harris’ office has become so “pronounced” that President Joe Biden’s own team is aware and concerned about staffers.
Conservatives immediately pounced on Politico’s report on administration dysfunction.
“The Democratic Party is almost solely reliant on the continued viability of a doddering, barely-there president. The infighting that will occur over his succession will be epic. The oppo has already started,” Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro tweeted in reaction to the report.
“Feels like there might be a pattern here,” Republican activist Matt Whitlock added, referencing a 2019 story that similarly used anonymous sources from Harris’ short-lived presidential campaign to allege that the then-senator was running a dysfunctional and chaotic organization many were displeased with.
Former Trump administration official Richard Grenell pointed out that the Harris story had a whopping 22 sources – far more, he claimed, than any anonymous report on his former boss, Donald Trump, would have required.
Politico used to run with one person leaking something when Trump was in the White House.
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