During the 2020 campaign, President Joe Biden reportedly used politically derogatory terms to describe Vice President Harris, as recounted by Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin, two Politico heads, in a 2022 book.
These reported comments contradict Biden’s public statements that Harris is a strong candidate capable of defeating former President Donald Trump and is “ready for the job” of president. This also fuels speculation that Biden’s endorsement of Harris was an act of revenge against party leaders who had threatened to remove him from the race using the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
According to multiple excerpts from Burns and Martin’s book, Biden referred to Harris as “strange,” “messy,” “uneven,” “fallen short,” and a “fiasco” before selecting her as his running mate.
The authors also recounted that Biden “privately” and “repeatedly” criticized Harris as inauthentic. “During the primary, Biden privately and repeatedly shared the common observation that Harris didn’t seem to know who she wanted to be,” they reported.
The authors continued by noting that Harris was neither the candidate who most impressed Biden’s vice presidential search committee nor the person his advisers believed was the most immediately prepared for the presidency.
