WATCH: Biden Says VP Kamala Harris is ‘Smarter Than I Am’ During Visit to CDC
President Joe Biden told staffers at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that Vice President Kamala Harris is “smarter than I am” while introducing the VP to give brief remarks.
President Biden and Vice President Harris visited the CDC during their trip to Georgia Friday, and Biden wrapped up his pep talk to the agency with a lengthy anecdote about meeting with then-VP Xi Jinping, the point of which was that when Xi asked the then-veep to define America, he replied “Yeah, in one word. And I mean it — in one word: possibilities.”
Biden then quipped “And I shouldn’t have done that because I wanted to yield to my Vice President, who’s smarter than I am.”
“Well, there’s not much to add to that, Mr. President,” Harris said, to laughter.
She then returned the favor by saying that “I do believe that this administration, with the leadership of our President, is without any question about science.”
It was a small moment, but one which illustrated the respect and affection that is one of the under-covered stories of the Biden/Harris administration.
Many political observers thought it would be unlikely or difficult for Biden to select Harris as his VP after their contentious debate exchange, but the decision to do so has led to a team that appears to be meeting and exceeding the partnership modeled by President Barack Obama, and which Biden has explicitly said he’d like to emulate.
Another example this week, missed in the flurry of events, was the fact that Vice President Harris, not Biden, was first to comment publicly on the horrific mass murders in Atlanta that targeted women if Asian descent and the businesses where they worked. It was a shrewd recognition of Harris’ status as the first Asian-American vice president, and a mirror image of the time then-Vice President Biden jumped ahead of Obama to endorse marriage equality.
Critics have noticed the dynamic, including this week when Biden inadvertently referred to his veep as “President Harris,” and opponents cast this as evidence of “who’s really running things.”
Watch above via The White House.
