On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Harris-Walz Campaign Co-Chair Mitch Landrieu responded to a question on how similar 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris will be to President Joe Biden by stating that Biden believes “the most important thing is to save the democracy of this country by beating Donald Trump. So, he wants her to do whatever it is she thinks she can do,” And that while “the two of them have put together, I think, one of the most consequential four years”, her policies “will be similar in some ways, different in others.”
After playing video of Biden saying that Harris isn’t going to distance herself from him economically, host Jason Johnson asked, “Now, Mr. Mayor, this is an interesting thing to me as a former campaign manager and as someone who knows political science. Harris is in a very interesting position. She is running for president, but she is still the Vice President. She has to be respectful to the job that she’s in. … So, she has to find a way to run for president but not undermine Joe Biden. What is that tension like, or is it not much of a tension because there have been a number of policies that she’s going to continue with should she be elected president in November?”
After saying, “Yeah” while Johnson was asking if there’s “not much of a tension” Landrieu stated, “Well, a couple of things just to mention outright: First of all, she actually adores President Biden, you saw that today, that incredible amount of love they had in between them. It just adds an exclamation point, these are two people that really like each other, a President and a Vice President and Donald Trump threatened to kill his vice president who is refusing to endorse him. So, with that said, the second thing I would like to say is the two of them have put together, I think, one of the most consequential four years and will go down in U.S. history as being incredible on their own.”
Landrieu continued, “The third thing to remember is this, besides Joe Biden being a President, he’s also a good politician, and I think that there’s a clip…of him saying, listen, if it helps you for me to be for you, I’ll be for you, but if it helps to be against you, I’ll be against you, too. He understands. And one of the reasons why he did the most selfless thing that we’ve seen a politician do by stepping back [is] that the most important thing is to save the democracy of this country by beating Donald Trump. So, he wants her to do whatever it is she thinks she can do, and of course, Vice President Harris, as great as a partner as she has been for President [Biden], will develop her own sets of policies. They will be similar in some ways, different in others. People shouldn’t be surprised by that. I’m sure that they don’t agree on 100% of the things. Being the number two is different from being the number one. But, as you’ve seen her in the number one position, that suit fits her pretty good, and she’s doing really, really well.”
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