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Harris and her boss Biden have been under fire after the latter put her in charge of seemingly thankless tasks like the border crisis, along with a range of other issues that reportedly haven’t helped the vice president build up her own political capital. Harris has also struggled with the ever-increasing criticism and scandals in her own office.
Despite allegations from other Democrats in the US media that she was given an impossible portfolio by President Biden during their first year in office, Vice President Kamala Harris stated that she does not believe she is being “set up to fail,” amid her ongoing struggle with plummeting approval ratings and staff reportedly fleeing the “bully” vice president.
In an interview with Margaret Brennan of CBS, shown this Sunday, the vice president was asked whether she agreed with the assumption that President Joe Biden handed her a portfolio that is meant to work against her in terms of her political future.
“No, I don’t believe I’m being set up to fail,” Harris responded. “I’m the Vice President of the United States. Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue, and it couldn’t be handled at some other level. And there are a lot of big, tough issues that need to be addressed, and it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues and this is no different.”
Moreover, Harris refused to clarify whether she thought the scrutiny she was under was because she is a Black woman.
“I’ll leave that for others to deal with,” she said. “I have a job to do, and I’m going to get that job done.”
Brennan also recalled a recent episode from Harris’ interview with comedian Charlamagne, in which the vice president visibly showed “a flash of anger” in response to a question about who the real president of the country is, Biden or the Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, who last week effectively torpedoed the White House’s social spending agenda.
In that interview, Harris emotionally responded to the question, asking the comedian not to “act like a Republican” by asking such questions, and reminded him that Joe Biden is indeed the president, while she is “Vice President and my name is Kamala Harris.”
To Brennan’s question, Harris responded that it was not anger, but “frustration.” And that these days “injustice” fires her up.
“Injustice. Injustice is just generally what will get me… I don’t like unfairness,” she said.
.@margbrennan: “What gets you fired up these days?”@VP Harris: “Injustice. Injustice is just generally what will get me… I don’t like unfairness.”
Tune in to Face the Nation for more of our exclusive interview tomorrow at 10:30am E.T. pic.twitter.com/j7Tx44ZBAS
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 25, 2021
Is Democracy the Biggest Threat to Harris?
In a separate segment of the interview, Harris apparently made a slip when asked by a reporter about what she saw as the “biggest national security challenge” to the country. The vice president pointed out that “frankly” speaking, it is democracy.
“Frankly, one of them is our democracy. There is, I think, no question in the minds of people who are foreign policy experts that the year 2021 is not the year 2000,” she said. “And we are embarking on a new era where the threats to our nation take many forms. Including the threat of autocracies taking over and having outsized influence around the world.”
Later in the interview, she corrected her previous remark, saying that the “fight for the integrity of our democracy” is necessary.
The vice president, meanwhile, considers her greatest achievement so far, after holding the office for nearly a year, to be the fact she is the first person of her gender and ethnic background to reach the vice presidency, which she says inspires children to believe that anything is possible in terms of being who they want to be.
WATCH: @VP Harris discusses her biggest accomplishment during her first year in office: Inspiring children.
More of @margbrennan’s exclusive interview this Sunday on Face The Nation pic.twitter.com/nw4pQ66wcr
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 24, 2021
The vice president’s image and job fitness have allegedly been damaged recently by a staff exodus, fuelling rumors of a terrible work climate, which have surrounded the vice president for a large part of the year.
According to those claims, Harris is a “bully” who has subjected her staffers to “a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism.” One former Harris staffer reportedly claimed that there is a particularly “abusive environment” in the vice president’s office, 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 former employee told the Washington Post in early December.
In the past month, Ashley Etienne, Harris’s communications director, and Symone Sanders, senior adviser to the vice president and chief spokesman, both announced their departures.
And according to recent reports in the US media, some other prominent staffers working for Harris are “eyeing the exits.” The White House has played down the departures, with press secretary Jen Psaki claiming it’s “normal” for people to want to “move on.”
As Harris was seen by many as the 79-year-old Biden’s successor as the Democratic standard-bearer during her campaign last year and early in her vice-presidential term, her portfolio has come under scrutiny from critics and analysts, and some have recently questioned the political future of the first woman of color in such a high position.
Harris’s responsibilities include, among other things, dealing with the migrant situation at the US border, voting rights, and campaigning for President Biden’s major social policy bill. However, the vice president’s personal approval ratings have fallen with Biden’s since taking office, and even hit record lows, overtaking Biden’s poll numbers in the rate at which they have declined.
This news originally appeared in Sputnik News.
