Molly Jong-Fast Defends Kamala Harris After Interview, Tells MSNBC She’s ‘Dogged’ By ‘Inherent Misogyny and Racism’ In Media Coverage
Molly Jong-Fast chalked up much of the negative coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris to “inherent misogyny and racism” after a sit-down between the two.
Appearing with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on Saturday, Jong-Fast argued “tension” surrounding the performance of the vice president comes down to the fact that she’s the first female elected to such a high office.
“Not everybody sort of gets what she’s up to,” Velshi admitted about Harris, then reading from Jong-Fast’s Vanity Fair interview, in which the journalist complimented Harris as “way friendlier and more accommodating than a man in her position would ever be.”
Jong-Fast noted the U.S. is a country that does not “naturally elect women leaders” when discussing criticism of Harris and she also pointed to “inherent misogyny and racism” in both the way stories about Harris are reported and digested.
“There’s a lot of inherent misogyny and racism in the way that news is reported, in the way that people read news, in ways that we don’t even know,” she said. “There’s an intersectionality that we should be thinking about when we read about women, when we read about people of color that’s inadvertent sometimes — sometimes it’s not — but it really is a problem.”
This problem, she added, has “dogged” Harris in her role as vice president and the coverage of her performance.
According to an average of recent polls reported on by the Los Angeles Times this month, Harris has an average disapproval rating with voters of 53 percent and an approval rating of 39 percent.
Watch above via MSNBC
