Vice President Kamala Harris appeared confused after being asked about the rumors that President Joe Biden had to choose a Black woman as his running mate to win the 2020 election.
Earlier this year, Harris spoke with reporter Astead Herndon for the New York Times' "Run Up" podcast that went live on Thursday, November 17.
"He came to the decision that he needed to choose a Black woman," Herndon told Harris. "While that is obviously about you, it’s not necessarily you personally, but your identity ... Does it matter that that narrative has existed, that Biden needed to choose someone who was a Black person, and should it matter?"
However, the vice president was puzzled by the line of questioning. Herndon then reworded his query.
"Does it matter that, that kind of narrative around Biden needed to choose a Black woman as a running mate still exists, and has hovered over that selection?" he asked her.
"It happened," she replied with a laugh. "I don’t think, I honestly don’t understand your question. Has it lingered?"
"He chose a Black woman, that woman is me, so I don’t know that anything lingers about what he should choose," she continued. "He has chosen, he asked me to join him on the ticket."
In 2020, late Senator Harry Reid also speculated that Biden "came to the conclusion that he should pick a Black woman" as VP.
"They are our most loyal voters and I think that the Black women of America deserved a Black vice-presidential candidate," he said at the time.
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This isn't the first time that Vice President Harris' ethnicity has come up in conversations surrounding her high profile political career.
"There’s sort of this undercurrent, like she’s Black and she’s a woman!" Joe Scarborough said on the Friday, September 22, installment of Morning Joe. "And that’s why people don’t like her, because she’s the vice president."
Campaign staffer Ashley Allison also shared her opinions on why she thought Harris had low approval ratings throughout her vice presidency.
"Most people don't know what vice presidents do," she said while at a roundtable event with Alyssa Farah Griffin and Alice Stewart. "And now she is a history maker. She is a woman, she is a Black woman, and it's the easy thing to do ... to say she's the attack dog, go after her."
