US vice president Kamala Harris has been accused to be a “bully” who has made her office staff members face “constant soul-destroying criticism”, The Washington Post reported.
The daily recently came out with a piece after interviewing 18 people connected to Harris and it alleged that the latter would fail to read briefings they prepared and turned them on if she was criticised for not being prepared.
The damaging claims against the No 2 in the Joe Biden administration were brought by staff members who worked for Harris and they were published amid confirmed departures of two high-level officials and likely exit of two others too.
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” a former colleague of the Democratic leader, who became the US’s first-ever woman vice president earlier this year, told The Post.
“With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why,” the report cited Harris’s staffer as saying.
For some, these are not fresh traits that Harris was displaying.
Gil Duran, who worked with Harris for five months in 2013 before resigning, said the latter was “repeating the same old destructive patterns”.
In a piece he penned for San Francisco Examiner, he said, “One of the things we’ve said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it’s her.”
Speaking to The Post, he said, “Who are the next talented people you’re going to bring in and burn through and then have (them) pretend they’re retiring for positive reasons.”
People familiar with the matter told Politico that even more “key members of Harris’ orbit” are “eyeing exits” and have expressed interest in leaving with the Democrat’s vice-presidential tenure yet to complete a year.
The poll ratings of Harris, who had ran for the presidency in 2020 but quit the race much early, have plummeted and top voices in the Democratic Party are reportedly irked by the idea of her running for the top post in 2024, provided the party wins and Biden refused to have another go.
Among the four staff members who are leaving the vice president’s office are Symone Sanders, a senior adviser and one of Harris’s closest aides, and Ashley Etienne, the office’s communications director.
Official sources, however, said that the duo’s departures were long-planned and not because of any turmoil which is being reported.
Harris herself has also tried to rubbish the reports of tension. Axios, meanwhile, said that the vice president’s staffers are leaving because they are fatigued and did not want to carry a permanent tag as “Harris person” and there are better opportunities to seek elsewhere.
Zia Yusuf
Sunak with Boris Johnson
Sunak with Suella Braverman