JILL Biden allegedly told close supporters that Kamala Harris could “go f**k herself” after she attacked the president’s record on race during a 2019 debate, a new book claims.
Harris’ hit on Biden became one of the most memorable moments of the Democratic primaries and left the then-candidate’s team scrambling to recover.
Biden himself was allegedly also unnerved by the attack, turning to Pete Buttigieg on stage during a commercial break and blasting Harris’ comments as “some f**king bulls**t.”
His team pushed back on Harris’ criticism over the next few days as polls showed her gaining ground on Biden.
Yet while the Biden campaign’s pushback attempted to appear composed to the public, Jill Biden did not remain as polite behind the scenes.
“She had watched the debate from her seat in the opera house, about ready to jump out of it,” writes Atlantic reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere in his new book, Battle for the Soul.
“She’s small and a community college professor. Most people forget that she’s proudly still the Philly girl who likes to tell the story of when she showed up at the door of a boy named Drew who’d been throwing worms at her 9-year-old sister, and, in Jill’s telling, 'pulled back and punched him in the face.'
“Jill was and is the guardian of the Biden honor, the Biden id,” he adds.
“She couldn’t bear to watch a woman who called herself a friend of her son’s—although Beau was not her biological child, she’d raised him his entire life as if he were—try to tear her husband down, to score a point at a debate.”
A week after the Miami debate, Jill was reportedly on a call with close supporters when she hit out at Harris’ comments.
“With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he’s committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis?” she slammed.
“Go f**k yourself.”
During the debate, Harris had gone after Biden on his history on race and particularly his 1970 stance on busing and desegregation of schools.
Dovere claims that Harris had to be convinced to take the approach during the debate, asking: “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”
While Harris insists that she was running in the primaries to become president and not for vice president, her team were concerned that it could lose her the role if she lost the war of words with Biden.
Harris had seized her moment when the debate eventually turned to the topic of race.
“I’m going to now direct this at Vice President Biden: I do not believe you are a racist, and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground,” she said.
“But I also believe, and it’s personal – it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.
“And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
Biden appeared taken aback and said she mischaracterized his position before he stopped speaking.
Yet the debate then went to a break, in which he hoped to share the moment with Buttigieg.
“Well, that was some f**king bulls**t,” Biden said, according to Dovere.
At the time, Biden and Buttigieg did not know each other very well but the former South Bend mayor has since become his Secretary of Transportation.
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