Kamala Harris muzzled in Biden’s 2024 campaign announcement video
Vice President Kamala Harris was seen but not heard in President Biden’s 2024 campaign launch video Tuesday.
Harris, 58, appeared 13 times in the three-minute video announcement, but didn’t speak once as America’s oldest-ever president urged voters to “stand up for their fundamental freedoms” and help him “finish the job.”
Harris has faced criticism on many fronts during her tenure as Biden’s No. 2, and the relationship between the pair is a source of constant speculation.
The veep’s office has been described as “chaotic” and “toxic” by former staffers and like her boss, Harris has occasionally struggled making speeches or responding to questions — with her comments often derided as “word salad.”
According to RealClearPolitics, Harris’ average favorability rating stands at 37.8% below her boss’ scanty 40.9% average.
In February, a Rasmussen Reports poll found that only 39% of likely voters think Harris should be Biden’s running mate in 2024, compared to 48% who said she shouldn’t be and 13% who weren’t sure.
Biden himself reportedly has shown frustration with Harris, with author Chris Whipple writing earlier this year that the president had called her a “work in progress” at some point in late 2021.
In contrast to the silent treatment given Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence introduced then-President Donald Trump at a June 2019 rally in Orlando, Fla., giving a 15-minute-long speech before Trump took the stage to announce his 2020 re-election bid.
Like Harris, Biden didn’t have any speaking role in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign announcement. However — unlike the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign video — Obama’s 2012 video only featured voters talking about his presidency and the concerns they wanted to be addressed by him over the next four years, with no commentary from the 44th chief executive.
“As Americans, we believe in freedom and liberty — and we believe that our democracy will only be as strong as our willingness to fight for it,” Harris wrote in a tweet Tuesday, sharing Biden’s re-election launch video.
“That’s why [Biden] and I are running for reelection,” she added.
Harris spent Tuesday afternoon visiting NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in suburban Greenbelt, Md., with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and addressed abortion rights advocates later in the evening at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington.
The vice president has become the administration’s foremost spokesman on the issue of abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, calling access to the procedure a “fundamental right” in Los Angeles earlier this month after a Texas judge ruled to restrict access to abortion drug mifepristone — a ruling that was later stayed by the Supreme Court.