Kamala Harris ‘hates’ Boris Johnson and Team Biden ‘remembers PM’s “racist” Obama comment’

Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
New President-elect of the United States Joe Biden and his Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are both said to dislike their British counterpart Boris Johnson, pictured (Pictures: PA/AP)

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.’

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Joe Biden in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 12, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
Biden and Harris are said to have been deeply offended by comments Johnson made about former President Barack Obama being ‘part-Kenyan’ (Picture: AP)

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.

TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hold a meeting at UN Headquarters in New York, September 24, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Boris Johnson and Donald Trump in September 2019. The British PM’s chummy relationship with his American counterpart is also likely to further tarnish him in the eyes of Biden and Harris (Picture: PA)

‘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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