(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro refused to walk back his rebuke of former Vice President Kamala Harris after she claimed she passed him over as a running mate because he appeared overly ambitious.
Shapiro previously told The Atlantic that Harris was trying to “sell books and cover her ass” following revelations in her memoir, 107 Days.
He was pressed about those comments during a Sunday interview on MS Now (formerly MSNBC), where co-host Symone D. Sanders asked whether he wanted to “parse” the remarks.
“No, there’s no parsing,” Shapiro replied. “Look, I stand by what I said. I think the way in which the author described my emotion, frankly, was not accurate, but the words are mine and I stand by them.”
Shapiro added that The Atlantic author mischaracterized both what Harris had written about him and his reaction to those claims in a Dec. 3 article titled “The Operator.”
“I think what was relayed to me by that author that the vice president had written about me just simply wasn’t true. I think the vice president and I had very and continue to have very candid conversations. And I think the way in which it was articulated to me what was said was certainly not accurate.”
Asked why he felt “it was important to correct the record here?” Shapiro replied: “No, I’m not correcting in any record. I’m standing by what I said.”
The remarks come just months after Harris explained in her memoir 107 Days that she passed over Shapiro for the vice-presidential slot due to concerns he was unwilling to settle for a subordinate role.
“At one point, he mused that he would want to be in the room for every decision,” Harris wrote. “I told him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation. A vice president is not a copresident. I had a nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership.”
