VP Kamala Harris Takes ANOTHER Solo Call With a World Leader

"V20210215LJ-0128" (United States government work) by The White House

On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris take another phone call with a foreign leader without Biden.

According to reports, the Vice President had another solo phone call with a foreign leader as he spoke with the prime minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, without President Biden. 

In the call, Harris allegedly “affirmed her commitment to deepening the strong alliance between Norway and the United States.” 

According to a readout of the call, the Vice President thanked the Prime Minister for Norway’s close security partnership with the United States and generous contributions to the development and health security efforts around the world.

This is not the first time that Harris took calls without Biden. She also previously had solo calls with French President Emanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Prime Miniter of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu.

With just less than two months into the new administration, Harris has already been frequently doing solo phone calls with world leaders. This signals that she will be more engaged in foreign policy despite her experience having been mostly entirely in the domestic sphere. 

However, leaders around the world look at the Vice President as Biden’s “heir-apparent” and are eager to build a relationship with her. 

One European ambassador told Politico last month that everyone would see Harris as a “potential president in waiting, much more than in previous presidencies.”

Besides doing solo phone calls with foreign leaders, Harris had also participated in the first bilateral meeting of the new administration between the United States and Canada, an opportunity that was not afforded to Biden when he was sitting as a Vice President during the Obama administration. 

Compared to the previous Trump administration, Vice President Mike Pence occasionally spoke with foreign leaders directly through phone calls. However, President Trump prefers to call the leaders himself. 

“210210-D-BN624-0864” by (CC BY 2.0) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Another more concerning issue is how the chief of staff sets the tone of the meeting when Biden would invite Republican senators to the White House in order to reach a bipartisan deal on COVID-19 relief this month.

In her first month as Vice President, Harris has been standing largely at Biden’s side. She was with Biden at signing events and speeches. People see Harris watching and following Biden’s lead while only starting to carve away at a separate portfolio for herself.

Being a Vice President is a delicate role for someone who is used to being in control. Before being sitting as a Vice President, Harris served as a senator of California and a state attorney general. 

Harris is yet to take on a specific set of issues other than promoting whatever the President is focused on at the moment, which is so far more focused on the federal government’s response to the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, Biden has made it clear that he wants Harris to make her approach the same as how he served as the Vice President for Obama for eight years. 

It can also be noted that when Biden appeared with Harris for the first time after picking his running mate in August, he recounted how Obama chose him as his running mate. Biden said, “I told him I wanted to be the last person in the room before he made the important decisions.”

“That’s what I asked Kamala,” Biden said. “I asked Kamala to be the last voice in the room, to always tell me the truth, which she will. Challenge my assumptions if she disagrees. Ask the hard questions. Because that’s the way, we make the best decisions for the American people.”

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