Katie Couric swipes NBC's Trump interview
Veteran journalist Katie Couric offered how she would have handled a Trump interview following the blowback NBC News received for Sunday's "Meet the Press."
AUSTIN, TX - Ex-NBC star Katie Couric lectured her former employer over the network's widely-criticized interview with Donald Trump during her appearance at the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
Liberals across the media landscape tore into NBC News and its new "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker over the past week for "normalizing" Trump by granting him an interview and for what they surmised was a lack of readiness to handle such a bombastic political figure.
During an interview at the festival on Friday, the former "Today" anchor was asked what "lessons" should be learned by the media in covering Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
She first responded by acknowledging the media's "big challenge" and "conundrum" in covering Trump, who she said "it's mind-boggling" that he is the presumptive Republican nominee.
Ex-NBC star Katie Couric lectured her former employer over its recent Trump interview while speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival on Sept. 22, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
"I think that it's very, very difficult for a journalist- and we saw this with the CNN town hall, more recently on Meet the Press,' for a journalist to interview Donald Trump because he ignores every question and he's just like a bulldozer. He just doesn't listen to the questions and just, just talks over you and repeats lies and you can try to correct him."
"And I really don't appreciate that the women are the sacrificial lambs in these situations," she continued. "I think it's because he's sexist and he rolls over women more and I think he refuses, probably- I think [former Axios reporter] Jonathan Swan kind of was the most successful guy to get him, but I think he refuses to interview men because I think probably some of his female, you know, interrogators are more polite? I don't know what it is… I don't know. It's tricky. It's very, very tricky."
Couric suggested "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker was the "sacrificial lamb" for NBC in order for former President Trump to agreed to do an interview. (Screenshot/NBC News)
Couric, who was asked how the interview "would have played out" if she had conducted the interview, to which she responded by saying Trump would be "walking off."
She then detailed what she would have done had she been the "producer of the ‘Meet the Press' interview."
"If it's videotaped, what I would have done is- I would have to the best of my ability, and I think Kristen tried to come back at him, but I would have had so many facts and figures ready and I would have been really focused on predicting what he was going to say… I would have some system," Couric said. "And I think absent of that, if he still insists his lies are- or he's telling the truth or he's not fabricating stuff, I think I would have done interstitials within the body of the view and said- I would have done freeze frame. And then later, as the interview aired because it was videotaped, it wasn't live, I would've said, ‘Actually, despite his protestations, this is not true.’ And I would have given the reasons why."
Former "Today" anchor Katie Couric spoke with The 19th co-founder and CEO Emily Ramshaw in The Paramount Theater at the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas on Sept. 22, 2023. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
Couric continued. "And I think that, you know, we are here to get the truth. And I think unfortunately, through all his bluster and bravado and bullying, he gets his way. And I think he has to be held accountable. So I like that they videotaped it. But to do a fact check after the fact and to do it online, it just doesn't work. So if I had been producing that, I would have done these interstitials and corrected the record in real time as the interview aired."
NBC News did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
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