MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend suggested she had a bad experience while working for her former boss, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sanders-Townsend, who served as Harris’ chief press secretary and senior adviser before joining MSNBC in 2022, appeared with Biden administration veteran and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki to discuss the attacks on Harris, who is set to become the new Democratic nominee, and how she is responding to them.
“Being the first, whether it’s the first woman, the first person of color, just the first, sometimes people don’t know how to treat you. They don’t know how to respond,” Sanders-Townsend said Thursday, “and unfortunately sometimes they fall back on tropes and memes and stereotypes that are racist and sexist.”
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Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former aide to Kamala Harris, suggested she had a bad experience working for the vice president. (Screenshot/MSNBC)
The liberal MSNBC host then shifted the topic to his own personal experience working with Harris.
“Working for her was a new experience for me because I had never worked for a prominent woman before; I had only ever worked for men,” Sanders-Townsend told Psaki.
She continued, “There was this one day at work where I thought to myself, ‘Ma’am, you might be the last woman I work for, because there’s a lot to deal with here.’
“There’s a story there,” Psaki said with a laugh.
The New York Times editorial board urged Kamala Harris to “answer” questions from reporters “better than Biden.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is known for having multiple staff members quit during her time in office. (Alison Joyce/AFP via Getty Images)
“But she was always aware of the criticisms against her, right?” Sanders-Townsend said. “We didn’t hide it from her when I worked there, but she wasn’t deterred by it. But I think that any candidate, any person in power, needs to be aware of the criticisms.”
“Because the last thing you want is for a candidate to be there, unknowingly, or a principal, or the vice president of the United States, and someone says something and they say, ‘What does that even mean?’, or ‘Well, sir, we discussed it this morning at 10 o’clock,'” she added.
“Yeah,” Psaki agreed, “so it’s important that they notice, and that’s going to be really interesting. It’s going to be about how they respond to it.”
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After President Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris quickly became the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. (Bizayev Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
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During Harris’ tenure as vice president, her office saw a series of staff exodus, sparking criticism of high turnover among those around her.
After President Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, Harris quickly became a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
