All is not well in the White House. Some three months after Joe Biden was unceremoniously forced to step aside as the Democratic nominee, the president seems determined to make it clear that he is still in charge – at the expense of Kamala Harris.
Between stepping on the vice president’s campaign events with his own surprise appearances to weighing in on the spat Harris started with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over hurricane relief, Biden appears to be taking the long-rumored behind-the-scenes feud public.
The latest example? The commander in chief snapped at a Cabinet official who tried to remind him it was time to turn a briefing over to Harris. On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke and Michael Brendan Dougherty to discuss the latest dig and what it says about the state of the Democrat Party.
The Dig
Biden was speaking at a televised briefing on the recent hurricane devastation from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Friday when Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm gave him a nudge that it was time to give Harris, who was attending remotely, the floor.
“I think we’ve saved lives, not me, but we, all of those folks out in the field have saved lives, but there’s more to do, and I’m going to do everything in my power to get it done,” Biden said as he flipped to the last page in his binder. “The fact of the matter is that we’re in a situation where uh, well, we’re going to have to…”
Seemingly realizing the president had finished his prepared remarks but continued to speak, Granholm gently tapped Biden on the arm and gestured towards the screen broadcasting Harris. “I know,” Biden responded tersely. “I’m going to go to the vice president in a second.”
He quickly joked that Granholm is “his boss” as he pressed on, only to then be interrupted by Harris herself. “Hang on one second, Madame Vice President,” Biden said when she started to speak.
The president went on to share that he is planning to ask Congress for additional money for hurricane relief efforts before finally turning to Harris. “So with that, I’ll yield to the president – I mean the vice president,” he said to laughter.
Megyn said there is only one way to read that exchange. “I submit to you the president has about had it with Vice President Kamala Harris and everyone around her pretending she has already won and ascended to his job,” she said. “He was annoyed at the beginning… and then he made that ‘joke,’ which we all know there was a charge behind. He didn’t find it funny that she is actually the president.”
Adding Insult to Injury
But the tension didn’t end there. Cameras panned around the table once Harris began speaking to reveal everyone paying close attention to her remarks – except Biden. Instead, the president was seen flipping through his binder, reading note cards, and never looking towards the screen the vice president was being shown on.
While there have been plenty of rumblings about ill will between Biden and Harris and other top Democrats in the wake of his ouster, these are the surest signs yet. “This is obvious,” Megyn said. “It has been happening now in the public eye for a few days that he has been stepping on her, he has been annoyed with her, and he is not afraid to tell us that he is still the top dog and she has not earned this position.”
As Cooke explained, Biden has been treated as “a puppet” and “a figurehead” by many in the media and his own administration since 2020. “Then those who had been propping him up and pretending he wasn’t senile decided to change the story, and they knifed him in the back and in the front and got rid of him,” he noted. “The second they got rid of him, they lost interest completely in him and the presidency… and moved on to Harris.”
One could understand why Biden hasn’t taken kindly to the treatment. “Joe Biden was actually the man who was elected as president of the United States,” Cooke said. “And it must be extremely annoying both on a personal level – if you are the guy who actually won the White House and has been president for nearly four years – or if you believe in our constitutional system, as I do, and you think that the person who is elected ought to be the person who is in charge.”
Friendly Fire
From Axios and NBC News to Politico and The New York Post, the media has wasted no time reporting on the tension within the Biden administration. And Dougherty said the post-election postmortem is sure to reveal even more about how this impacted the race.
“This is not a unified Democratic Party, it is not an organized one, and I am waiting for the post-election truth to be told,” he said. “You know that reporters are sitting on all of this right now… and there will be a great book about this being either a disaster or somehow a disaster turning into a triumph.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Cooke and Dougherty by tuning in to episode 916 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.