‘Madame Vice and the Transportation Kid’ put on ‘ridiculous’ dog and pony show, but who’s buying it?

Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg put on a dog and pony show Thursday, traveling to North Carolina together to tout the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, prompting New York Post columnist Kyle Smith to ask who’s buying this ridiculous Kamala and Pete show? After all, the bill passed several weeks ago and they’re still plugging it?

The orchestrated feel good moment came amid reports that Harris is losing a second high-level staffer at the end of this month, with senior adviser and chief spokesperson Symone Sanders set to exit at the end of the month — the development coming despite the vice president’s office denying reports of alleged internal frustrations.

In addition to reports of Team Harris “dysfunction,” there have also been reports of a rivalry or tension between Harris and Buttigieg amid growing speculation that President Biden may not run for reelection — he’ll be 82 in 2024. Democratic insiders are reportedly concerned that Harris would be a poor nominee for the party given her historical low approval ratings, and there seems to be a growing effort to promote Buttigieg as a more desirable alternative — there has even been speculation about nominating Harris to the Supreme Court to get her out of the away and avoid a contested primary.

On Thursday, Harris and Buttigieg were photographed hugging at the foot of Air Force Two, which prompted a body language expert to tell Business Insider that Buttigieg seemed “a little bit ill at ease because he’s back and he’s leaning forward.”

“Did you see that hug between Wonder Boy President in Waiting Pete Buttigieg and Back Off Little Man I’m Boss Lady of This House Kamala Harris?” Smith wrote. “I’ve seen leprous porcupines get closer together for a hug. Harris and Buttigieg could have danced like that at a Catholic high school in 1957 and the chaperone would have said, “I’ll allow it. If anything, there’s room for two Holy Spirits in between.”

There was also a scene at an all-electric bus depot and light rail garage, with Harris sitting behind the driver’s seat of a bus while as Buttigieg, who seemed to be going out of his way to display deference to Harris, looked on.

Fittingly, the vice president made reference to the popular children’s song, “The wheels on the bus go round and round.”

Smith described Harris as “looking like the first sitting vice president who will ever cackle her way to political oblivion as Buttigieg’s political fortunes seem to be going in the opposite director — the left appears to equate an openly gay president being equal to, or even superior to a woman being commander in chief.

“What was the purpose of this little awkward-as-small-town-community-theater scene? Well, Madame Vice and the Transportation Kid were out to display to the public the fact that they totally aren’t fighting even though every other day a leak appears in the Swamptown Gazette about how Democrats are scrambling to offload her somewhere before she becomes their next presidential nominee,” he opined. “Don’t be surprised if she is sent on an urgent diplomatic fact-finding mission to, say, Jupiter.”

Smith points out that Biden didn’t get the expected bump in the polls over the infrastructure bill, noting that even the New York Times reported that it was “doomed to wet-firecracker status because the problem with our infrastructure is not a lack of spending.”

“The problem lies with two core Democratic Party constituencies — crazy-eyed environmentalist jihadis and cement-in-the-gears public interest lawyers — who keep dragging out the approval process for anyone who wants to build any public project more ambitious than a dog run,” Smith wrote.

He concluded, “So Harris and Buttigieg are selling two things that aren’t happening: their fake allyship, and the phony American infrastructure revolution.”

As for the rivalry talk, the best indication that it’s still raging may be this claim from the cable propaganda network CNN: “Buttigieg, 39, and Harris, 57, were once rivals, along with a group of more than a dozen others, when they competed for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. Since then, the pair’s husbands, Chasten Buttigieg and Doug Emhoff, have touted their friendship and posted to social media about their walks around the nation’s capital.”

Tom Tillison

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