Vogue editor Anna Wintour allegedly “pissed off” Vice President Kamala Harris, who subsequently seemed to piss off President Joe Biden’s office well before Biden’s Inauguration Day in 2021.
Two weeks before becoming the second most powerful person in America, Harris told her aides to address a leaked cover shot of the VP for a then-upcoming issue of “Vogue,” according to excerpts from the book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” written by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, provided to Politico. Wintour chose to portray Harris in a pair of Converse shoes and skinny pants so she would come across as “approachable,” the outlet reported.
Madam @VP, I firmly believe the picture on the right is not only unworthy of you as #2 in the Executive Branch (@POTUS), but a total disrespect to your accomplishments as a leader and as a BIPOC! @CBCFInc @voguemagazine #POTUS #WhiteHouse #BidenHarris #CBCF pic.twitter.com/VqySFXJYzf
— Stephen R. McDow II (@StephenMcDow) March 24, 2022
Harris was so “frustrated” that Wintour had attempted to make her seem approachable that she had her incoming press secretary, Symone Sanders, get in touch with the fashion godmother to convey her negative feelings, Politico continued. (RELATED: ‘Do People Just Not Want To Work For Her Anymore?’: Doocy Presses Psaki On Staff Leaving Kamala Harris)
Harris’ chief of staff Tina Flournoy was allegedly surprised by the VP’s anger at Wintour, especially as it came shortly after the events of Jan. 6 and a plethora of other global crises, Politico reported. Flournoy reached out to a Biden campaign official regarding the image. “[T]he Biden adviser told Flournoy that this was not the time to be going to war with Vogue over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue. Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems,” the book described, according to Politico.
Following her annoyance at being portrayed as “relatable,” the relationship between Harris and Biden grew even more fraught and “filled with anger, eye-rolling, portfolio feuds, and real and perceived slights,” Politico noted. “Some of Harris’s advisers believed the president’s almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved. … Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious.”
Harris’ staff was also annoyed that Biden charged her with handling Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador during one of the worst immigration crises on America’s southern border in recorded history, Politico continued. Harris’ staff allegedly saw the southern border crisis as “politically undesirable.”
The release of the damning portrayal of Biden and Harris’ relationship comes as yet another staffer has fled the office of the Vice President. National security adviser Nancy McEldowney resigned her position Monday and is at least the 10th high-level staffer to jump Harris’ ship in less than a year.