Jill Biden runs an 'abusive office that's like The Devil Wears Prada'
Jill Biden and Kamala Harris are said to be rivals in the quest for power, given Joe Biden's dotage.
And sure enough, they run the same kinds of staff offices: hellscapes.
In a story about Anthony Bernal, Jill Biden's chief of staff — the guy who poses Jill for photos like these — Politico reports:
Bernal's allies and enemies alike say that his loyalty to the First Lady is absolute. Even many of his detractors concede that his creative talents and attention to detail have benefitted Dr. Biden.
But many of these same officials argue that Bernal's pursuit of perfection on behalf of the First Lady does not excuse the way he treats some other staffers. Many described him as "berating" and "toxic" because of his unfiltered criticism of others and tendency to trash talk his colleagues behind their backs. Some compare him to MERYL STREEP's character in "Devil Wears Prada" while another equated him to the ever-conspiring Littlefinger in "Game of Thrones."
Politico reports that the little feller has a "mean streak" and is constantly "berating staff" if not declaring them "stupid" on the phone and in staff meetings. He badmouths them behind their backs even if he plays "friend" to them to their faces. He's made a lot of them cry. He has so disgusted these people that they've taken to surreptitiously recording his abuses and tirades, apparently providing Politico with its material.
He sounds like a stereotypical court eunuch from the imperial court of China — attaining a position of great power through intense loyalty to the emperor, effectively ruling the empire with the emperor distracted, using that power to the detriment of the empire, and acting horribly to those around them.
The court flatterers for Bernal, though, are out there, releasing their flowery words in his defense:
"Anthony's loyalty to our team and the First Family is unrivaled, and he holds himself, and all of us, to the highest standards," Chief of Staff Julissa Reynosos told Politico.
"There is no one at the White House with a bigger heart than Anthony, which is one of several reasons why so many in the First Lady's office have worked with him for years. He cares deeply about the personal and professional growth of his colleagues."
Eeew. Anybody believe that?
It sounds very similar to the kind of staff office Kamala Harris runs, which we've described here.
Like Jill, Kamala has also hired extremely appalling people to her top staff positions. To start, back in her Sacramento days, one of her top staffers, Larry Wallace, reportedly made young staffers crawl under his computer to "fix his printer" so he could ogle their underwear, forcing the state to make a $400,000 sexual harassment payout. Harris claimed to know nothing about it, any more than Jill supposedly knows nothing about Bernal's reported depredations. Wallace landed on his feet with another political staff gig elsewhere, apparently helped by someone, no idea whom, with no consequences to him.
Harris's current top staffers, such as Tina Flournoy, are also reportedly horrible to work for, too:
A large part of the blame, sources said, goes to Harris's chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, whom aides described as an overbearing woman who doesn't tolerate dissenting ideas, who blames everybody else but herself when things go badly, and who tries to keep the VP sheltered from reality.
BizPac Review, citing Politico, said that with her around, Harris's office was like this:
"People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it's an abusive environment. It's not a healthy environment, and people often feel mistreated. It's not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s---," one source said.
This treatment has left staffers and aides "experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust," according to Politico.
This is nasty stuff, suggesting that perhaps more than realized, Kamala and Jill are the flip sides of the same bad penny.
Why do women like that hire creeps of that sort — gushy toward the boss, ultra-loyal, and monsters to anyone below them? Well, one place to look is in the similarities of Jill and Kamala, two ambitious women who attained their own power not through their charisma or powers of persuasion, or impressive track records on anything, but through the offices of powerful men, Kamala serving as "mistress" to California power broker Willie Brown, and Jill apparently cheating with Joe well before Joe's first wife was killed in a car crash, according to Jill's ex-husband Bill Stevenson. That's kind of disgusting, and apparently sets the stage for the hiring of horrible top staffers and the court intrigue that follows. This isn't about merit anymore; it's about wiles and guile.
The question of whether either of them knows about how horrible their staff are is a moot point. Of course they do. Here was my argument from a few years ago that Kamala certainly knew exactly what kind of person she was employing.
As for Jill, recall that she's a pretty touchy, egotistic person, too, demanding to be called "doctor" despite her gut-level educational "doctorate," which has nothing in common with the kind of brains it takes to achieve an M.D.
She's also played Edith Wilson in Joe's low moments.
She's had suspiciously gushy profiles written about her by court flatterers anxious to please the empress, calling her a goddess and vomit-inducing passages like this:
You generally hear her before you see her because she is often laughing. She is, quite simply, a joy multiplier.
If Jill Biden were a normal person, she'd be as revolted at that passage as all normal people. But she wasn't. It's very likely she demands that kind of absurd flattery, being a person who's absolutely the opposite of it. I suspect she's mean, at least as mean as Kamala, and probably an even dirtier player.
Well, now she's got these reports coming out, same as Kamala did. Did anything like this ever come out of the Trump administration? Yes, Trump was an erratic, mercurial boss, probably not the easiest guy to work for, but he never engaged in any of this icky court intrigue characteristic of people who are vicious but need to pretend to be Lady Merciful in public. What a vile administration this Fraudster Joe presidency has become.
THESE VIDEO'S NAME NAMES!
IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHERE THIS NATION WILL SOON BE, WATCH THESE AND PACK FOR THE ROAD!
Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion | The New School
Chris Hedges "The Politics of Cultural Despair"
Chris Hedges | NAFTA, Clinton, and Obama BETRAYED Americans
Ex-Hillary Clinton operatives hold crisis meeting to find way to make Kamala Harris more likeable
It probably doesn't get more comical than to learn that a group of former Hillary Clinton operatives have gotten together in a quest to make Kamala Harris more ... likeable.
According to Axios:
Details: The host was Kiki McLean, a Democratic public affairs expert and former adviser to both Clintons.
- Her guests included Harris confidant Minyon Moore; two former DNC officials, Donna Brazile and Leah Daughtry; Biden adviser and leader of his outside group, Stephanie Cutter; former Hillary Clinton spokeswomen and Democratic strategists Adrienne Elrod and Karen Finney; and former Obama White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri.
- Nobody from the vice president's office was at the dinner, but Harris is attuned to her outside network of supporters. Harris' office declined to comment on the dinner.
Behind the scenes: These were old friends getting together for the first time since the pandemic began, and celebrating a Democratic president after the Trump years. But the dinner had an urgent purpose.
- Harris had been hit with a series of damaging press accounts, with leaks from administration officials questioning her political judgment and describing rampant dysfunction in her office.
- The operatives spent the dinner discussing how to fight back against negative perceptions, and how to help Harris boost her national media footing.
Was that a hyena-laugh we heard in the background? The idea of making Harris more 'likeable' is laughable, given that the big objections from voters is about her abysmal performance as vice president on the tasks attached to her name, such as controlling the migrant surge at the border. That, and the fact that she's Instagram- and Vogue-photo-shoot obsessed, slept her way to the top, and co mes off as a phony. Voters don't like phonies.
The team that was in charge of making Hillary Clinton 'likeable' to voters is sure they can turn this one around, too. Ummm...
Axios went to great ends to report that this wasn't Team Kamala itself that was working on this makeover for Kamala. That's a bit of a stretch.
According to this piece, by Peter Nichols, which ran in The Atlantic on the exact same day, as the Axios report:
She consults a “kitchen cabinet” of people who offer her a perspective from outside the vice-presidential bubble: Minyon Moore, who oversaw her transition; Donna Brazile, who managed Gore’s 2000 campaign; and Karen Finney, a former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She may soon hire some additional Washington veterans to bolster her staff.
See any matching names? Too bad I can't give everyone reading this a highlighter pen to draw lines linking the matching names of these so-called Kamala advisors from one article to the other -- Brazile, Moore, Finney, they're all the same people, and they all run the Kamala show for her. Making Kamala likeable has got to resemble one of the labors that Hercules was asked to perform. Or maybe Sisyphus.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, between nanny-goat laughs perhaps, would like you to know that she's deep. In the Atlantic piece, she said:
“Part of my frustration is the way that this system rewards sound bites” as opposed to “depth and thought,” Harris told me. She really did seem fed up with the media portrayal of her—particularly when it comes to those clips that drive headlines. But Harris also has a keen appreciation for the political power of the sound bite. When she challenged Biden over busing at the first debate, she spoke of a California schoolgirl who was part of a newly integrated class. “And that little girl was me,” she said. Soon afterward, her campaign started selling $29.99 T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase.
After decades of practicing sound-bite politics herself, she's angry that the media is throwing it at her, given that she's such a deep thinker and all. The hyena laughs were ... oh forget about those giggles and laughs, just accept that she's a woman of depth.
Back to the old phony, it seems. The Hillary-linked likeability crew has got its work cut out for them.
Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion | The New School
Kamala Harris Frustrated with Media for Ignoring Her ‘Depth and Thought’
Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her frustration with corporate media for featuring “soundbites” over substance in their coverage of her.
“Part of my frustration is the way that this system rewards sound bites” as opposed to “depth and thought,” Harris said in an interview with the Atlantic reporter Peter Nicholas.
Nicholas reported Harris was “fed up” with the media portrayal of her vice presidency, but noted her campaign specifically leveraged the soundbite “that little girl was me” attack against her then-rival for the Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Nicholas also asked Harris if she regretted her attack on Biden on the issue of race.
“There is no sunlight or daylight between he and I on the issue of race, on the history of racism in our country, and also what we need to do going forward to fight for equity-based on race, gender, and everything else,” she replied.
Harris and her team have stumbled in the first six months of office, careening from crisis to crisis with painfully awkward moments.
Polls show Harris as the least popular vice president in modern history.
Damaging leaks about her office mistreating employees emerged in the media, fueling concerns of infighting and sabotage against Harris.
Her biggest struggle remains her handling the border crisis after Biden put her in charge in March, earning criticism from the right for completely failing to stem the crisis and criticism from the left for telling migrants not to come to the border.
Harris also struggled to explain why she would not be visiting the Southern Border, ultimately concluding in an embarrassing gaffe in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt requiring her to reverse her position.
Harris was also ridiculed for warning against voter ID because some areas did not have a convenient Kinko’s or OfficeMax to do so.
Harris also met with Texas Democrats who fled the state to protest election security laws, but the event soon became a super-spreader event for the coronavirus, forcing her to get tested while her office tried to keep it a secret.
Harris has repeatedly complained about her media coverage, reportedly keeping an “enemies list” of reporters and political operatives who offend her.
Another struggle for Harris is her repeated attempt to laugh off tough or awkward questions in interviews.
During the 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump repeatedly mocked Harris for responding to tough questions by laughing.
The only thing almost as bad [as Joe Biden] is Kamala with the laugh,” Trump said at an October rally during the 2020 campaign.
“Haha, that’s so funny. Hahaha,” Trump said, imitating her laughs in an interview with 60 Minutes.
“Is there something wrong with her?” he added. “She kept laughing. At very serious questions.”
THIS VIDEO DOCUMENTS THE HISTORY OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER AND AMERICA MIDDEL CLASS SINCE BILLARY CLINTON.
NAFTA JOE BIDEN, A CORRUPT, BRIBES SUCKING CLOSET REPUBLICAN LAWYER IS CLOSELY IDENTIFIED WITH THE BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS IN HISTORY, HAS ALWAYS SERVED THE RICH, WALL STREET, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS AND ANYONE WILLING TO STICK A BRIBE IN LAWYER HUNTER BIDEN'S POCKET.
THERE WAS A REASON WHY LAWYER BARACK OBAMA WANTED JOE BIDEN TO SERVE HIS CRONY BANKSTERS IN THE BANKSTER REGIME OF LAWYER BARACK OBAMA, LAWYER JOE BIDEN AND THE BANKSTERS' RENT BOY, LAWYER ERIC HOLDER.
Chris Hedges | NAFTA, Clinton, and Obama BETRAYED Americans
A new book savagely attacks Obama from the left
Something has changed lately on the left. Democrats should be riding high now because they control the federal government: they've got the White House; the House; the Senate (sort of, with the filibuster the fragile thread keeping them from total control); and a Supreme Court that, while ostensibly conservative, has a closet leftist chief justice and two remarkably cowed new "conservative" justices. Nevertheless, they are an angry, fractious party. Last week, the knives came out for Kamala Harris. This coming week, a new book launches a scathing attack on that former secular saint, Barack Obama.
Since 2008, Barack Obama has been the Democrat party. He was the president who could do no wrong. Every political attack against him was discounted as "racism." He was more charming, more intelligent, more emotionally attuned, more effective, and more just everything good than any man who had ever occupied the White House, including Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln combined. (All of them were racists.)
When Trump came along, the Democrats and their media shills weren't merely offended by his politics. In many ways, the gravest offense was that this loud, combative, conservative-governing orange man dared to step into a White House made hallowed by the presence of a man once hailed as a "magic negro" or another crucified Jesus.
Both Biden and Kamala got reverential treatment, but it was nothing like Obama. Biden was grandfatherly, experienced, kind, and stable, and he'd learned his White House politics under Obama's aegis. Kamala was brilliant, multi-racial and multi-cultural, female, and compassionate. Kamala was sold especially hard because everyone understood that Biden, no matter what he said, wasn't in it for the long haul. She was obviously going to be the real president, even before Biden inevitably withdrew and she got sworn in.
But as noted, something's been happening with the Democrats. They should be a jubilant party joyously imposing Marxism on the land, but, instead, they're angry, and they're starting to turn on each other. Just last week, Edward-Isaac Dovere, a longstanding author at The Atlantic, published a nasty attack on Kamala, although one phrased in polite terms.
Through anecdotes and quotes, Dovere reveals that Kamala is anti-social, socially awkward, bland, ineffective, unfocused, platitudinous, uninteresting, hostile to reporters, paranoid (she has an enemies list), and unable to hold onto her employees. None of this surprises me. My decades living and working in the Bay Area meant I'd heard rumors for years saying everything that Kamala offered politically came through her relationship with Willie Brown, a brilliant California politician. Without Brown, she's nothing.
For The Atlantic, one of the most politically loyal outlets in America, to publish such this attack on someone who should be a Democrat darling was surprising. More surprises arrived on Friday when the Daily Mail revealed that Edward-Isaac Dovere is back, this time with a new book describing Obama as a "parasite" sucking the Democrat party dry and leaving it with nothing. Although the book is ostensibly about the 2020 campaign, it's Obama who springs into focus:
Barack Obama was a 'parasite' on the Democrat party who sucked it dry for his reelection and left it saddled with debt, a new book claims.
The former President used the party structure as a 'host' for his 2012 campaign for a second term then treated it like a 'husk' to be discarded with $2.4million in debt.
Obama's aloof demeanor and professorial detachment masked the reality that he was full of 'self-assured self-regard.'
He oversaw the 'pilfering of talent, money, resources, and purpose' away from the Democratic National Committee to his own reelection team.
[snip]
In a scathing portrait, Dovere, a journalist with The Atlantic, claims that Obama was so arrogant he believed that if he could have run in 2016 for a third term he could have beaten Trump.
Obama's ego was on full display on the golf course and he bragged that his Tweet sent after the Charlottesville far right rally in 2017 was liked more than anything Tweeted by Donald Trump.
[snip]
He writes that Obama's hubris peaked in 2015 when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, his signature healthcare law, and ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment requires all states to grant same-sex marriages.
[snip]
In actual fact, despite his 'beatification among Democrats', Obama 'inadvertently helped usher in what followed him', meaning Trump.
There is much more in the Daily Mail article about Obama's destructive arrogance, sense of entitlement, greed, and ego, as well as his obscene rants about Trump. As far as I'm concerned, the damage he did to the Democrat brand is yet more evidence that America supported Trump, not Biden, in 2020.
The book is Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump, and it may end forever the Democrats' Obama worship.
Democrat Women Gather in D.C. to Discuss Kamala Harris Media Crisis
A group of Democrat women political strategists gathered in July for a dinner in Washington, DC, to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’s media “crisis,” according to a report.
Axios reports that former adviser to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, Kiki McLean, hosted the dinner with former DNC officials Donna Brazile and Leah Daughtry; former Barack Obama spokesperson and Joe Biden adviser Stephanie Cutter; former Hillary Clinton spokeswomen and Democratic strategists Adrienne Elrod and Karen Finney; and former Obama communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who also worked for Hillary Clinton’s second failed presidential campaign.
No one from Harris’ office was present for the dinner but “Harris confidant Minyon Moore” attended, according to the report.
The group discussed best practices for fighting back against negative perceptions of Harris, as she has suffered a series of political setbacks in the first six months of the Biden presidency.
The group also complained that coverage of Harris reminded them of the coverage of Hillary Clinton which they perceived as sexist.
Polls show Harris as the least popular vice president in modern history. Damaging leaks about her office mistreating employees previously emerged in the media, fueling concerns of infighting and sabotage.
The Atlantic reported Thursday that Harris was frustrated with how the corporate media has treated her.
“Part of my frustration is the way that this system rewards sound bites” as opposed to “depth and thought,” Harris said in an interview with the Atlantic reporter Peter Nicholas.
No comments:
Post a Comment