WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Kamala Harris claims then-President Joe Biden’s inner circle let her take the fall for the disastrous border crisis and threw her under the bus when her popularity started to outgrow his.
In a scathing excerpt of her forthcoming book “107 Days,” Harris — who was tasked with overseeing the immigration crisis weeks after taking office — suggested that Biden’s team added “fuel” to the negative narratives that were being peddled by critics at the time.
“When Republicans mischaracterized my role as ‘border czar,’ no one in the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved,” she wrote in an excerpt obtained by The Atlantic on Wednesday ahead of the book’s Sept. 23 publication.
“Instead, I shouldered the blame for the porous border, an issue that had proved intractable for Democratic and Republican administrations alike,” Harris continued.
“No one around the president advocated, Give her something she can win with.”
Harris claimed, too, that the White House failed to defend her publicly when negative stories arose.
“They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible,” she wrote.
“Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me,” Harris added.
“And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more.”
Elsewhere, the ex-veep went on to suggest that Biden’s aides were less than impressed when polls started to show her popularity was rising during his disastrous 2024 campaign.
“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital,” she wrote.
“It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him,” she said. “His team didn’t get it.”
One former Biden White House official told The Post Wednesday that Harris’ shots at underlings were unbecoming for someone in her position.
“Name names if you are going to blame staff,” the ex-official said.
“There were 50 people over the four years that worked in White House comms — and most of them junior — that now are going to be questioning why the VP is mad at them.”
Another West Wing aide from the Biden-Harris era pointed out that the author ripped Jean-Pierre’s briefings in the excerpt — and not those of Biden’s first press secretary Jen Psaki, who would sharply rebuke reporters for unflattering inquiries about the VP.
“The book will give us all little indicators of who [Harris] valued and favored in the West Wing,” the source noted.
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