The worst kept secret in Washington, D.C., is that first lady Jill Biden has a strained relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, the UK Daily Mail reported. The tension has become public since Harris took over as the presidential candidate and lost spectacularly.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the relationship between Biden and Harris "has at times been frosty" since the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Harris went after Joe Biden during the debates and insinuated that he was racist for his stance on forced busing.
"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me," Harris said during the debate in 2019.
Edward-Isaac Dovere's book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump, excerpted by Politico, recounted Jill Biden's reaction to Harris' behavior at the debate. During a call with supporters the week after the debate, Jill Biden raged about it.
"With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he’s committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis? Go f--- yourself," Jill Biden said about Harris.
Since that time, Jill Biden has had a vendetta against Harris and can't seem to forgive her for it. However, things have come a head since Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris as his replacement.
That was most evident shortly after the election when the two women wouldn't look at each other during a public appearance shortly after the election. "It’s safe to say that Jill Biden hates Kamala Harris’s guts," political commentator Steve Cortes captioned a video of the icy interaction.
It’s safe to say that Jill Biden hates Kamala Harris’s guts. pic.twitter.com/K6Te9Onf50
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 12, 2024
Even without their previous history, the events of the last six months have created a huge rift between the families. Although Joe Biden officially dropped out of the race, insiders believe it was a coup against the president that ultimately got him to give up his reelection bid.
Joe Biden publicly endorsed Harris, but GOP political strategist Jason Meister noted that "Biden is intentionally enacting revenge on Kamala for knifing him in the back," the New York Post reported in October. "He never liked her," Meister added.
"The happiest he’s looked in four years was when he put a red [Trump 2024] hat on after speaking with Shanksville, [Pa.] firefighters [last month] on 9/11. He should just come out and endorse Trump," Meister said.
Indeed, it seemed that Joe and Jill Biden were secretly rooting for Trump. Jill Biden wore red on Election Day and later seemed to troll Harris and her campaign's message of "joy."
Although Harris and the Bidens were supposedly on the same side, it's been clear for a while that their relationship was strained. Now that they have nothing to lose, they have dropped all pretense.
