President Joe Biden has gone back on his promise to have lunch with Vice President Kamala Harris, gradually decreasing the number of lunch appointments over his administration.
At the beginning of his presidency, Biden had promised to privately meet with Harris for lunch “once a week.”
“[Like] Barack and I, we have lunch alone once a week,” Biden told People in February of 2021. “That’s the deal when we’re both in country, which we’ll be for a while because of COVID, and I see her all the time.”
Biden significantly missed the mark on his luncheon vow in his first year in office, and saw her even less in 2022, according to a Daily Caller analysis of Biden’s public schedule.
In 2021, the president sat down with Harris 24 times — approximately half of the number of weeks in the year. In 2022, they had a total of eight lunch appointments in the entire year, according to the public schedule, and have had five so far in 2023.
Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary under the Trump administration, told the Daily Caller that “those numbers are surprisingly low.”
“Trump and Pence met/spoke almost daily. Lunch usually weekly,” Spicer said.
The White House and Harris’ office refused to respond to several inquiries from the Daily Caller on the lapse in the Biden-Harris meetings.
Beyond lunches, Biden’s publicly scheduled events with Harris have diminished in general over his administration. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Senate Democrats Offer Tepid Support For Kamala Harris Amid Critical Media Reports)
The number of their jointly-attended meetings, including Cabinet meetings, presidential daily briefings and public events declined by half — from a total of 215 in 2021 to 97 in 2022 — according to Biden’s public schedule.
In 2023, the pair have met 29 times outside of their lunches so far, the analysis found.
US President Joe Biden (2 L), alongside First Lady Jill Biden (3 R), US Vice President Kamala Harris (2 R) and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff (R), arrives at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2023. – The theme of this year’s Easter Egg Roll is “EGGucation”. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden is expected to announce his 2024 presidential bid in the coming months, telling reporters Friday that he will make his decision “relatively soon.” Harris will be his running mate again, despite her low poll numbers, Biden said in January of 2022.
Harris’ approval rating was at 36% in March, according to a Monmouth University poll. The underwater numbers have also been met with some tepid endorsements of Harris being vice president in 2024 and critical media reports questioning her competency.