Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have never had a good relationship.

In fact, Joe never wanted to choose her as his vice president to begin with. He was strongly in favor of picking Gretchen Whitmer over her, but his advisers implored him that selecting an African American woman was a necessity, especially during the year of George Floyd’s death.
Biden’s closest confidant, his wife, Jill, was likewise opposed to selecting Harris. Jill retained hurt feelings over Harris’ attack on Biden over busing at a primary debate in 2019, which she saw as an accusation that Biden is racist.
When Harris and Biden entered office, their relationship only worsened. By summer, numerous media outlets were reporting that Kamala Harris’s office was in turmoil, as staffers were faced with the same toxic environment that others had experienced under Harris when she was in public office in California. One Harris staffer went as far as to say, “It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s**t.”
Biden’s allies were publicly wary of the stories that were coming out of the vice president’s office. Biden’s staff, Politico reported, was “concerned about the way Harris’ staffers [were] treated.”
But even apart from that controversy, the West Wing was disillusioned with Harris, as she had seemingly added nothing to the administration’s accomplishments and had only worsened public perceptions of the White House’s response to the crisis at the southern border. (In a disastrous interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Harris infamously said, “[W]e are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”)
Harris, for her part, was upset with the responsibilities assigned to her by the White House. She was especially frustrated with her assignment to address immigration’s root causes, as she felt that it had led to her being blamed for the border crisis.
Harris also believed Biden and hi...