Rachel Maddow Presses Kamala Harris for Not Picking Pete Buttigieg ‘Because He Is Gay’: ‘Hard to Hear’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pressed Kamala Harris for “bluntly” admitting in her memoir that choosing Pete Buttigieg as her 2024 running mate would have been “too big of a risk” – a calculation Maddow suggested was sidelining him “because he was gay.”

In 107 Days, her memoir of the presidential campaign, Harris recounts the frantic process to select a running mate as she prepared to run against Donald Trump.

She discloses that Buttigieg was her “first choice” for the ticket, writing that “he would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man,” but that he was “too big of a risk.” She ultimately turned to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz instead.

During an appearance on MSNBC promoting the book on Monday, however, Maddow, who is gay, pressed the former vice president to “elaborate,” adding: “To say that he couldn’t be on the ticket effectively because he was gay, it’s hard to hear.”

Harris shook her head.

“No, no, no, that’s not what I said, that he couldn’t be on the ticket because he is gay,” she replied.

She continued: “My point is, as I write in the book, is that I was clear that in 107 days, in one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor – to be a black woman running for president of United States and as a vice presidential running mate a gay man, with the stakes being so high, it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk.”

She added: “You know, I’ve been an advocate and an ally of the LGBT community my entire life. So it wasn’t about any prejudice on my part, but that we had such a short period of time, and the stakes were so high.”

Harris went on to compliment Buttigieg as “a phenomenal, phenomenal public servant.”

“I think America is and would be ready for that, but when I had to make that decision with two weeks to go, you know, and maybe I was being too cautious, you know …. Maybe I was, but that’s the decision I made,” she said.

“And I’m – as with everything else in the book – I’m being very candid about that, with a great deal of sadness about also the fact that it might have been a risk,” she concluded.

Buttigieg himself bristled at the passage on Friday, telling Politico he was “surprised” by Harris’s remarks.

“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” said the former South Bend mayor. “You just have to go to voters with what you think you can do for them. Politics is about the results we can get for people and not about these other things.”

Watch above via MSNBC.