Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s response to Hurricane Milton’s approach has put a spotlight on the awkward dynamics between him, President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris. While Biden confirmed that DeSantis has his personal phone number to coordinate directly on disaster response, this moment inadvertently undercut Harris’s efforts to appear more presidential as the election season heats up.

The tension only grew when an aide from DeSantis’s camp reportedly claimed the governor ignored a call from Harris regarding the hurricane, supposedly because he believed her outreach was motivated by political posturing rather than genuine concern. DeSantis, however, pushed back against this narrative, denying that Harris ever attempted to contact him, stating, “I didn’t know that she had called. I’m not sure who they called. They didn’t call me.” This contradiction highlights the political maneuvering at play as both camps attempt to score points in the wake of a natural disaster.

Harris’s attempt to portray DeSantis as playing politics backfired when she accused him of refusing her calls for political gain—without providing any evidence to support her claims. This led to critics like Fox News commentator Joe Concha speculating that this friction might be part of a larger internal struggle within the Democratic Party, with First Lady Jill Biden allegedly working behind the scenes to undermine Harris’s campaign.

Rumors have long circulated that Jill Biden and Kamala Harris have a strained relationship, dating back to Harris’s blistering attacks on Joe Biden during the 2019 Democratic primary debates, where she implied that Biden’s stance on school busing revealed racial insensitivity. The fallout from that confrontation reportedly left lasting tension between the two, with suggestions that Jill Biden has not forgotten or forgiven Harris’s past remarks.

Joe Biden’s behavior in recent weeks appears to feed into these rumors. His insistence on reinforcing Harris’s integral role in his administration—emphasizing how she’s been a “major player in everything we’ve done”—seems to be less about building her up and more about tying her fate to his own legacy. Biden’s decision to publicly delegate significant responsibilities to Harris, from foreign policy to domestic issues, might be a calculated move to prevent her from distancing herself from the administration’s perceived failures.

Harris’s dilemma is clear: she is stuck in a bind where campaigning on the need for new policies to address crime, inflation, and border security risks undermining the very administration she’s been a part of for four years. Yet if she doesn’t present fresh ideas, she risks appearing as nothing more than a continuation of Biden’s agenda—an agenda that has seen costs rise by 20 percent, disastrous foreign policy missteps like the Afghanistan withdrawal, and a border crisis that’s spiraled out of control.

When Harris was asked recently on The View if she would have done anything differently than Biden over the past four years, her answer was revealingly evasive: “There is nothing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of of of most of the decisions that have had impact.” This kind of answer only reinforces her critics’ narrative that she is unwilling or unable to differentiate herself from the administration’s perceived shortcomings.

The broader backdrop here is a world in turmoil under the Biden-Harris watch: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas and Iran’s attacks on Israel, record levels of illegal immigration at the southern border, and economic turbulence impacting everyday Americans. For many voters, these crises make it difficult to reconcile Harris’s claims of forward-thinking leadership with the harsh realities they’ve experienced during the current administration.

As Harris struggles to find her footing, DeSantis’s no-nonsense approach to the hurricane response and Biden’s decision to communicate directly with him only serve to highlight the vice president’s struggles. She’s caught in a political quagmire of her own making—unable to distance herself from Biden’s policies without undermining her own credibility, and failing to articulate a vision that sets her apart as a leader for the next generation.