White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued an emphatic defense of VP Kamala Harris going on a Hawaiian vacation even while some fellow Democrats who backed her campaign are out of luck.
‘Good for her,’ Harris said, when pressed on the tropical break, which comes days after Harris’s stunning loss to Donald Trump. Although she kept him under 50 percent in the popular vote, she failed to carry a single swing state.
Harris began her vacay on Tuesday, even as her campaign blew through more than $1 billion and the DNC abruptly laid off staffers without providing severance.
That prompted a question about whether President Biden thinks it was appropriate ‘from an optics perspective’ for her to skip town ‘when so many DNC staffers are literally wondering what they’re going to do?’
Jean-Pierre vigorously defended the trip, which coincides with rising nuclear tensions with Russia – the Kremlin even threatened a NATO missile defense base in Poland – and a final push to get Biden’s final nominations through the Senate.
‘The vice president has taken time off to go spend time with her family. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,’ she intoned.
‘I think she deserves some time with her family and to have some down time. She has worked very hard for the last four years, and her taking a couple days to be with her family: Good for her.’
She also defended Biden’s record on union issues. He became the first sitting president to walk a picket line during U.A.W. strike and regularly calls himself the most pro-union president in history.
‘That is something that he was given to him, and he is proud to own that,’ she said.
As for the laid off campaign aides, Jean-Pierre, herself a former campaign official, said she would have to refer the matter to the DNC.
Harris isn’t the only top official to take vacation, and Biden himself has faithfully returned to his Wilmington home and Rehoboth beach house on weekends.
Whether he has Thanksgiving and other holiday plans travel plans has not yet been confirmed.
Harris criss-crossed the country during her truncated presidential campaign when Biden, who just turned 82, ended his run.
But Trump faulted her for not keeping up with his rally pace. She scheduled multiple down days after the Democratic convention, preparing for major broadcast interviews and the sole debate.
Harris and husband Doug Emhoff, who would have been the first first gentleman had she become the first woman president, are on Kalaoa, which is on the west side of the big island of Hawaii.