Harris bristles at TV host over his question: 'Who the real president of this country is '

Vice President Kamala Harris got into a tense exchange Friday with TV host Charlamagne Tha God when he asked who the country's "real" president is.

"I want to know who the real president of this country is — is it Joe Biden, or Joe Manchin?" the host asked on his Comedy Central show, "Tha God’s Honest Truth." 

"Don’t start talking like a Republican, about asking whether or not he’s president," said Harrris, in an apparent reference to some Republicans arguing during the early days and months of the administration that she was in charge. "It's Joe Biden. It's Joe Biden, and I'm vice president, and my name is Kamala Harris."

An aide tried to step in and end the interview, but Harris continued the exchange in which the host, whose real name is Lenard McKelvey, argued that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat in a Republican state, is "holding up progress" and has effectively become Washington's top Democrat because he holds a deciding vote in the evenly split Senate. 

Harris responded: "I think it's a mistake to try and think about this only through the lens of Democrats versus Democrats, when the fact is Republicans are consistently and unanimously standing in the way of progress."

Manchin has been reluctant to endorse the administration's attempt to extend the expanded the federal child tax credit program through Biden's $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, which now appears stuck in the Senate until next year. 

Supporters say the program's payments to families amid the pandemic have been a tremendous help to many U.S. families amid the pandemic and that ending the extension will send them and their children back into poverty.

"I hear the frustration, but let's not deny the impact that we've had and agree also that there is a whole lot more work to be done and it is not easy to do,"  Harris said. "But we will not give up and I will not give up."

The host at one point also accused Harris and her team of pretending they couldn't hear the Manchin vs. Biden question through their earpieces, according to The Hill newspaper.  

"I can hear you," Harris responded. "C'mon, Charlamagne. It's Joe Biden."