Even Joe Biden can’t stomach Harris’ fit of pique in hurricane spat with DeSantis

When was the last time you can remember a president rebuking his own party’s nominee to succeed him with less than a month to go until Election Day?

As it turns out, for every 10 or so of his faults, President Biden does boast a virtue.

A few of his old-school instincts have survived his half-century in electoral politics, and one of those instincts is an aversion to using a crisis — like the one brought about by Hurricanes Helene and Milton — to smear his rivals.

That aversion has put him at odds with Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Monday, NBC News reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had declined to take calls from Harris as he managed the Sunshine State’s recovery from Helene and preparations for Milton.

While DeSantis himself professed to have been unaware of Harris’ efforts to reach him, the veep went scorched earth.

“People are in desperate need of support right now. And playing political games at this moment in these crisis situations, these are the height of the emergency situations,” she raged, deriding the governor as “irresponsible” and “selfish.”

In response, DeSantis rightly noted that it was Harris who was playing political games with a natural disaster poised to threaten the lives and livelihoods of his constituents.

“She has never called on any of the storms we’ve had since she’s been vice president until apparently now,” he pointed out.

Biden has twice been asked about the dispute over DeSantis’ behavior.

And to the world’s surprise, he’s now twice come to the defense of the arch-conservative governor, leaving Harris twisting in the wind.

On Tuesday, Biden was asked whether DeSantis had been “cooperative” in coordinating with the federal government.

Not only did the president reply in the affirmative, he said he had thanked DeSantis for doing “a great job.”

Then on Wednesday, Biden was asked directly if DeSantis should be taking Harris’ calls.

“All I can tell you is I’ve talked to Gov. DeSantis,” he replied.

“He’s been very gracious, he’s thanked me for all we’ve done, he knows what we’re doing, and I think that’s important.”

In a career full of indignities, this humiliation should leave even as cynical a creature as Harris reeling.

Faced with a question about the Harris-DeSantis spat, the president explicitly sided with the Republican.

Even Biden can’t deny that his veep is a crude opportunist — one who once came within inches of accusing him of racial animus during the 2020 Democratic primaries — in the wake of this disgraceful episode.

It has been theorized that Biden is deliberately undermining Harris as revenge for his ouster from the Democratic ticket earlier this year.

And reports have indicated that there is tension between the pair’s camps as Harris balances her dueling interests in remaining loyal to Biden and enumerating her differences with him.

But Biden wouldn’t set out to sabotage his right hand.

If she loses, Biden will be castigated as the bumbling fool whose presidency was so great a failure that he handed the White House back over to Trump.

If she wins, at least the Democrats will rewrite history to remember him as a selfless elder statesman who gave up power to beat the Donald.

No, the truth is much more incriminating.

It’s not that Biden wants to blow up Harris’ campaign, it’s that he can’t possibly abide her self-centered tantrum.

Despite her attempted rebrand as an amiable consensus-builder, Harris has none of those attributes.

For her, everything — including 170-mile-per-hour winds and deadly floods ripping through the southeast — is about her, and how she can use it to her political advantage.

That’s why she’s so angry that DeSantis has spent no energy feeding her ego, and has even gone so far as to manufacture a feud about it.

It’s seemingly her belief that the governor hasn’t paid her ample attention as he tends to the needs of his state’s beleaguered citizens.

DeSantis prioritized them over her, and she had the gall to characterize that as some kind of scandal.

That doesn’t pass the smell test — not even for Joe Biden.

For his part, the president still wants Harris to succeed him, but he’s just not willing to indulge her smears or delusions of grandeur to help her do it — at least not right now.

So it isn’t that Biden is trying to rebuke Harris. It’s that her behavior is so unbecoming that his more professional — and truthful — approach can only come across as a rebuke.

Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.