Rachel Maddow told fellow MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell Monday night that she believes former Vice President Kamala Harris wants to travel the country to figure out whether running for president again is “the right thing to do.”
Maddow dropped by O’Donnell’s “The Last Word” to discuss her hourlong Monday interview with Harris and offer some insight into the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee‘s current headspace. Maddow admitted right off the bat that she finds Harris easy to talk to and told O’Donnell that she thinks Harris is, first and foremost, “really fired up and ready to go.”
Maddow notably asked Harris point-blank in their interview whether or not she plans on running for president again. In response, Harris insisted, “That’s not my focus right now.” Maddow, for her part, told O’Donnell she believes Harris means what she said. “I think she’s eager to get back out into the country and start talking to people and listening to people again to figure out if it’s the right thing to do,” Maddow explained.
O’Donnell echoed Maddow’s sentiments, admitting that he does not think anyone will know Harris’ plans until the moment she chooses to announce them herself. “I think we’ll know when and if she announces,” O’Donnell said. “I think it might be hard to tell at any point before that.”
You can watch O’Donnell’s full conversation with Maddow in the video below.
Maddow revealed that she does not feel Harris holds any resentment toward former president Joe Biden over the way he handled the Democratic nomination last year.
“She’s definitely frustrated with the ways decisions were made around the president. She doesn’t really criticize President Biden himself,” Maddow noted. “She’s just caustic in terms of whether or not the political operation around President Biden was serving him well.”
The machinations of America’s political systems are not the only things that apparently frustrate Harris.
“The other thing about which she is utterly caustic is the way institutions and powerful people have failed the country,” Maddow added, citing Disney’s temporary capitulation to conservatives’ anger toward Jimmy Kimmel. “What has been a surprise are the institutions in our country that we expected more from.”
Maddow said that she believes institutions like Disney and other powerful companies and law firms need to start taking stands against the Trump administration.
“It’s the prescription for what needs to be done to get us out of this mess. We need better institutions. We need better elites,” Maddow remarked. “We need better powerful people.
“We need our institutions and our elites to not be capitulating. That’s the project of the American people who are trying to stand up for our country right now.”
