Vice President Kamala Harris and her team were upset with a Vogue magazine cover in the weeks prior to Harris and President Biden taking office, but a Biden campaign aide shrugged them off, according to a new book by The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.
The cover in question, which featured Harris in a casual jacket, tight-fitting pants and sneakers, was not what Harris was expecting, as she thought the cover photo would be one with her in more traditional business attire, with an American flag pin on her lapel.
"Harris was wounded. She felt belittled by the magazine, asking aides: Would Vogue depict another world leader this way?" reads an excerpt of the book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future," reported by Politico.
Yet no one appeared to take the concerns of the first female vice president in U.S. history seriously, the book says, with Vogue editor Anna Wintour defending the cover choice, telling Harris’ then-press secretary Symone Sanders that it was meant to make Harris "relatable."
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Harris’ new chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, brought up the matter to a senior Biden campaign official, who felt there were more pressing issues to deal with at the time.
"The Biden adviser told Flournoy that this was not the time to be going to war with Vogue over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue," the excerpt says. "Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems."
This is one of several examples of Harris apparently feeling slighted. The book says Harris "took it as a sign of disrespect" when White House staff would not stand when she entered a room, like they would for Biden.
Flournoy mentioned this to then-Biden adviser Anita Dunn, who told Politico that everyone has "a high degree of respect for the Vice President and the hard work she is doing for this President and our country. Particularly me."