Vice President Kamala Harris filled in for President Joe Biden on Monday, hosting a White House event for college athletes as the president underwent a root canal.
Biden was supposed to host College Athlete Day, where more than a thousand champion college athletes gathered on the White House South Lawn. Instead, Harris took responsibility for the presidential duty, delivering an address to the athletes.
Biden underwent the root canal procedure after reporting tooth pain on Sunday. The White House said the president received local anesthesia and did not transfer his powers to Harris.
"The president is doing just fine and he will be certainly working in the residence this afternoon," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said following the treatment at the White House.
The procedure forced Biden to reschedule a meeting with NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.
First lady Jill Biden raised speculation over whether Biden was conscious during the root canal when she commented on the procedure at a New York campaign fundraising event, saying she went to the dentist office at the White House to check on Biden and "he was under anesthesia. But he came up and he was good."
Asked for clarification of her remarks, a White House official said Biden had simply undergone a local anesthesia for the procedure.
Harris's subbing in for Biden comes as the White House has sought to boost her image as she faces low favorability ratings. The Biden campaign's launch video in April featured several clips of Harris with the president, part of what Axios described as a coordinated White House effort to rehabilitate her approval.
The unpopular Harris is widely seen as a liability for the 80-year-old Biden's 2024 campaign. Democrats rejected her when she sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019—she bowed out of the race before the first primary election was held.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Tyler Clifford and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Nupur Ananda in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Grant McCool and Leslie Adler)
