Kamala Harris' daily schedule has shown a significant decrease in the number of face-to-face interaction she has with Joe Biden
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Kamala Harris appears to be putting some distance between herself and her boss Joe Biden as the president struggles with record low poll numbers and multiple crises plaguing the country.
When Biden picked Harris to be the first female and woman of color to be vice president he strongly indicated she would be an equal partner in his administration.
In recent months, however, it appears the 2020 rivals-turned-running mates have drifted apart as Harris appears to have taken on lower-profile and less controversial tasks, mostly to promote the president's agenda.
Vice President Harris turned 57 Wednesday"No matter what's going on, you are always filled with so much joy, love, and smiles. Happy Birthday, @VP. Love you," Emhoff wrote of Harris, who turned 57 Wednesday.
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In the Biden-Harris administration's first nine months Harris has participated in 486 public and private events.
But the number of open press events she has done with the president has already fallen sharply from 18 in the short month of February to just one each in September and October - marking September 11 and the anniversary of Martin Luther King's memorial dedication.
A former Harris adviser told the Los Angeles Times said despite their public show of unity that Biden and Harris still remain divided by a lack of trust.
They said the vice president is disgruntled that 'she hasn't been given any all-star portfolio' to work with. The White House disputed the characterization.
Instead, a compilation of all of her publicly-announced events by the Times shows a more traditional vice presidency where she travels to promote her boss's plans for the country rather than sitting in the board room shaping them.
Invoking King, Biden said the country was still working to live up to its ideals as a nation and had reached an inflection point on issues including fighting voting restrictions. “I know that progress does not come fast enough,” Biden said. “It never has.”But he reiterated that protecting the right to vote was “central” to his administration. “I know the stakes. You know the stakes. This is far from over,” he said. © Provided by New York Daily News President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stand together at the Martin Luther King, Jr.
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In January for example, Biden and Harris had a packed schedule of 20 White House events together - despite only taking office on January 20.
But in October, which is a week from being over, they only have seven events on their shared calendar. Six were closed to press.
The most events the two had together - ranging from private lunches to public speeches - was in February in March, where they presented a united front on 38 occasions in each period.
In August, when the administration was grappling with the US's hasty military withdrawal from Afghanistan and Harris was embarking on her Southeast Asia tour, they met 16 times. The next month that number was slashed in half.
A White House official indicated to DailyMail.com that the public daily schedule doesn't tell the fill story. They said Biden and Harris often have meetings together that are not on their respective offices' daily guidance.
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The official also said Biden and Harris meet weekly for lunch.
'The Vice President keeps a busy schedule doing the work of the Administration and always in support of the President,' Harris spokesperson Sabrina Singh told DailyMail.com.
'Sometimes those events are together, other times apart, sometimes she is on the road amplifying the agenda of the Administration and highlighting the importance of Build Back Better.'
One of Harris's most highly-publicized consistent projects has been overseeing the migrant crisis as Biden's border czar.
She was named to the position in late March as the administration was looking at border apprehension numbers that had exceeded the same period the year before. Since then more than 1.7 million people were encountered at the southern border as of September, the highest number seen in decades.
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Out of her nearly 500 public and private events so far only 15 have been linked to that role. Two of them were open press events while the remaining were somehow limited in access.
Her most recent event connected to US-Mexico border migration was on August 3, when she and Biden met with Latino community leaders to discuss immigration reform and commemorate the 2019 El Paso mass shooting.
Biden and Harris initially clashed on the 2020 Democratic primary debate stage, including one particularly heated exchange when Harris confronted Biden on his past opinion on bussing, a program aimed at helping de-segregate schools that Harris herself was a beneficiary of.
But after becoming a single ticket and later a single administration, White House officials have strived to portray the two as leading together rather than a chief and his number two.
Biden reportedly held a similar role to the one he hopes to portray on Harris when he was Barack Obama's vice president, where he strived to appear as the president's partner rather than his deputy.
Some political analysts even saw Harris as Biden's heir apparent after the 78-year-old told donors in 2020 that he expected to lead a 'transitional' administration.
Harris has already faced a barrage of negative news coverage detailing a toxic and dysfunctional environment in her office.The dinner, organized by Democratic communications strategist Kiki McLean, included former White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri, top Biden adviser Stephanie Cutter, former 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign spokeswomen Karen Finney and Adrienne Elrod, strategist Minyon Moore, and former top DNC officials Donna Brazile and Leah Daughtry, according to Axios.
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Earlier this year it appeared as if Biden was giving Harris that role, as evidenced by her appearing at his first bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
But since then their meetings with heads of state have been largely without each other's presence.
Officials told the Times that the pandemic was at least partially to blame for what appears to be the two allies drifting apart.
They said the easing of pandemic restrictions and decreasing case rate in many places has allowed members of the administration to travel more, and get on the road to promote Biden's agenda to the American people.
That means they haven't met privately much, either.
After attending 15 of Biden's daily Oval Office briefings in February and 17 in March, Harris was only at two this month.
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Can Joe Biden Save His Presidency? .
With his domestic agenda at risk of failure and the prospect rising of a Democratic drubbing in the midterms, Biden needs to act swiftly to rescue his term.Even as Biden announced the terms last week of a $1.75 trillion framework to salvage his signature "Build Back Better" legislation—cut in half from the bill's original $3.5 trillion price tag—his approval rating was taking a beating. The latest Real Clear Politics average has just 42 percent of Americans approving of the job Biden has done so far, while 52 percent disapprove; that represents a sharp downturn over the past two months and a nearly 14-point drop overall from his post-inauguration peak of close to 56 percent.