White House says Kamala Harris will be Biden’s running mate if he runs for reelection

(CNN) — White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris would be President Joe Biden’s running mate should he run for reelection.

“Yes, he does,” Jean-Pierre told reporters when asked if Biden would keep Harris as his running mate, adding: “There’s no change.”

Jean-Pierre would not comment on possible conversations between Biden and Harris on any possible reelection plans telling reporters: “I can’t speak to a conversation that the vice president and the president had. I can only … reiterate what (White House press secretary) Jen (Psaki) has said and what the President has said himself: that he is planning to run for reelection in 2024.”

Harris told The Wall Street Journal that she and Biden haven’t talked about whether the 79-year-old will run for reelection in 2024.

“I’m not going to talk about our conversations, but I will tell you this without any ambiguity: We do not talk about nor have we talked about reelection, because we haven’t completed our first year and we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” Harris said, in a wide-ranging interview that published on Thursday.

These latest comments track with a similar comment Harris made in November when she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the pair had “absolutely not” discussed the next election.

In her interview with the Wall Street Journal, Harris said she did not think about whether Biden would decide to run again.

“I’ll be very honest: I don’t think about it, nor have we talked about it,” she said.

Harris’ series of end of the year interviews comes as she faced a rocky start to her historic vice presidency, including a spate of high-level staff departures, negative headlines and reports about turmoil in her office. She demurred when asked by the Journal about her staff, saying she was happy with their work and would remain focused on policy issues.

On voting rights, an issue Harris asked the President to lead for the White House, Harris didn’t call for a change in filibuster rules to lower the threshold of votes needed to pass most major legislation, according to the Journal, and declined to say whether she has told Biden her feelings on the issue.

“Ultimately, you know, the Senate is going to have to make a decision about the filibuster,” Harris told the paper.

She also would not take a stand on whether voting rights legislation should now come before the President’s social safety net expansion package that faces an uncertain increasingly future in the Senate: “I’m not going to choose between our children.”

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