Kamala Harris ‘hates’ Boris Johnson, with Joe Biden’s team taking a dim view of a comment made by Johnson they believed was racist, it is claimed. Aides close to Biden and Harris, the new vice-president elect, recalled the disgust over a remark the British PM made about Barack Obama in 2016.
That source told the Sunday Times: ‘If you think Joe hates him, you should hear Kamala.’ Johnson attracted the new power-pair’s ire’ after Johnson called former President Obama’s decision to remove a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office ‘a symbol of the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British empire.’
Obama was the United States’ first African-American president, and was born to an American mother and a Kenyan father. He appointed Biden as his Vice President in 2008. Harris is the highest-ranking woman ever to hold office in the US, and is the daughter of an Indian biologist and Jamaican professor.
One of Obama’s former aides who also worked alongside Biden, Tommy Vietor, was quick to highlight Johnson’s prior gaffe on Twitter, writing: ‘We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and slavish devotion to Trump.’ He also branded Johnson a ‘shapeshifting creep.’
Biden and Harris’s alleged coolness towards Johnson emerged as Downing Street sources told of the delicate negotiations currently underway to try and establish a rapport between British leader and his incoming American counterparts.
Johnson played up his camaraderie with President Donald Trump, who will be replaced by Biden in January. And Trump’s fondness for the British leader also potentially tainting him in the eyes of the new American president.
The British prime minister reportedly wants to talk to Biden about next year’s UN Climate Summit, which will be held in the UK.
Biden has pledged to take America back into the 2015 Paris Accord aimed at tackling climate change, which Trump exited in 2018.
But a Democratic source told the Times: ‘They do not think Boris Johnson is an ally. They think Britain is an ally.
‘But there will be no special relationship with Boris Johnson.’
Johnson’s popularity has slumped in recent months amid his uncertain handling of the coronavirus crisis.
It has infected 1.17 million Britons and killed close to 49,000.
His handling of the virus has been likened to Trump’s freewheeling approach, with both leaders hospitalized after themselves catching the virus.
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