Katie Couric criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her “inability to really succinctly answer questions sometimes,” which left her and other voters “frustrated” to the point where people were saying, “Answer the damn question, please!”
“I always find that people do better when they’re asked really challenging and pointed questions. I always felt that way about Hillary Clinton,” Couric, the former NBC “TODAY” anchor, said Thursday on her “Next Question with Katie Couric” podcast.
“If you’re giving them these weird, like soft amorphous balls, it’s really hard to process your message and be concise and say what you really need to say.”
Couric’s guest on the podcast was Jen Psaki, the MSNBC host and former White House press secretary under Biden. The two discussed the fallout from the election, which was won decisively by President-elect Donald Trump.
Psaki nodded as Couric described how Harris wouldn’t give straight answers to questions.
“I felt that too, and again, I guess [Harris] she really did well in so many areas, but I was frustrated by her inability to really succinctly answer questions sometimes, Jen,” Couric continued.
“If she was asked about changing the Supreme Court in that CNN town hall, she had an opportunity to talk about ethics and what, you know, [Supreme Court Justices Samuel] Alito and Clarence Thomas were doing, and she responded with one sentence and then went on to something unrelated to the question,” Couric said.
“You know, people notice that, and it’s like, ‘Answer the damn question, please!’
Couric was also critical of Harris for refusing to do any interviews for several weeks after she was chosen to succeed Biden as the running mate, saying it was “driving me crazy as a consumer.”
“What was that?” asked the former host of “Sot”.
“I don’t know,” Psaki replied before speculating that the Harris campaign was preparing for the debate.
“She should have been everywhere,” Couric later added.
Couric also asked Psaki about the infamous segment on “The View” during which Harris told co-host Sunny Host that “nothing comes to mind” after she was asked a relatively easy question about what she would do differently from her boss, the president. Joe Biden.
“Why didn’t Joe Biden say, ‘Listen, I know you’re going to have to leave this administration. Let’s talk about the areas where you can, where they’re legal, and Godspeed,’” Couric asked.
“Because — I think someone wrote that it was almost like they were more afraid of hurting Joe Biden’s feelings than they were of winning the election.”
Psaki responded by saying it was a “unique and painful summer” for Biden after he dropped out of his re-election bid.
The former White House press secretary said there was a “fragility” around Biden because of pressure on him to drop out of the race from Democratic Party powerbrokers like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Psaki said Biden was “beloved” by the party and that Harris had “navigated the politics of this in a very complicated way.”
“I think if I were running for president, Jen, I would sit down with my brain trust and say, ‘Okay, let’s work these questions out. What am I going to say?’” Couric said.
“And I would have had a template that I would have carried with me to every interview, and I would have gone through them and said, you know, ‘This is what I believe and this is what I’m going to do. address a question like this.’ Now, why didn’t they – it just didn’t seem like it was done. Am I crazy?” she asked.
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