Fox News host Jesse Watters said Tuesday that President Joe Biden may be considering removing Kamala Harris, who has been flagging in the polls, as vice president, saying his network has heard “whispers” that confirmation hearings are coming up in Congress.
“Our Capitol Hill Correspondent Chad Pergram tells us he’s been hearing whispers suggesting there could be some new high-profile confirmation hearings on the horizon in the House of Representatives,” Watters said on Fox. “Why is this a big deal? Because the house does not confirm normal nominees. But it does confirm vice-presidential nominees. Does this have something to do with Kamala Harris? It’s been no secret she’s been running out of favor with the Biden team.”
“There is a lot of conjecture right now about the future of Vice President Harris and her lagging poll numbers,” Pergram said. “So I got a message recently from someone who knows Capitol Hill very well and they suggested I should familiarize myself with the process to confirm a vacancy for the vice president in the Senate and in the House.”
Watters’ comments come after two CNN reporters penned a piece on Sunday headlined “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president.” The article cited nearly three dozen officials in Harris’ office and the White House as their sources, and few had nice things to say.
But there was one passage that caught everyone’s eye.
“Defenders and people who care for Harris are getting frantic. When they’re annoyed, some pass around a recent Onion story mocking her lack of more substantive work, one with the headline, ‘White House Urges Kamala Harris To Sit At Computer All Day In Case Emails Come Through.’ When they’re depressed, they bat down the Aaron Sorkin-style rumor that Biden might try to replace her by nominating her to a Supreme Court vacancy. That chatter has already reached top levels of the Biden orbit, according to one person who’s heard it,” CNN reported.
That small “rumor” prompted the Daily Mail to write: “Harris’ approval rating has plunged even further than Biden’s in recent months, with rumors swirling that the president is considering appointing her to the Supreme Court as a backdoor method of selecting a new VP.”
Now, as CNN noted, it is indeed an “Aaron Sorkin-style rumor,” referring to the writer of the hit show “The West Wing.” Dramatic things were always happening on the show, but things are much slower — and much more boring — inside the Beltway.
Harris’ approval rating has plunged to just 28%, according to a poll of registered voters released last week by USA Today and Suffolk University. Biden’s rating hit yet another a new low, plummeting to 38%, but all eyes are on Harris as the person most likely to succeed Biden and run for president when he leaves office.
The notion of appointing Harris as a Supreme Court Justice isn’t that odd, though. Democrats immediately began talking about “packing the court” — meaning to add more justices to the Supreme Court — shortly after Biden took office.
In April, Biden announced he had created a commission to study packing the court. The New York Times reported that Biden made the decision to move forward with studying the partisan plan because he was “under pressure from activists.”
But the move is so toxic that even socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) doesn’t support it, warning that if Democrats do so, then “the next time the Republicans are in power they will do the same thing.”