A former aide to President Donald Trump got schooled live on CNN after his sexist dismissal of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Jason Miller, now one of Trump’s in-house surrogates at the network, accused Harris of “hysteria” for her dogged line of questioning during Tuesday’s testimony from Attorney General Jeff Sessions before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers wouldn’t let him get away with it.
“How was Sen. Harris hysterical?” she asked on “Anderson Cooper 360” on Tuesday night. “I don’t really understand that. I mean, she was asking some tough questions.”
Miller claimed Harris’ questions amounted to a “completely partisan screed.”
POWERS: “But how was that hysterical?”
MILLER: “From my perspective ― my, I would say, objective perspective ― I mean it was ... it didn’t seem like there was any effort to try to get to a real question or get to the bottom of it.”
POWERS: “I think she asked a lot of questions, actually. She was very dogged, there’s no question, but I wouldn’t say she was any more dogged than Ron Wyden [D-Ore.] was, would you? Would you say that?”
MILLER: “Look, I have my opinion on that. I think she was hysterical. I don’t think that Sen. Wyden was really trying to get to the bottom of answers either.
POWERS: “But he wasn’t hysterical and she was. OK, I just wanted to clear that up. Got it.”
Another CNN Trump surrogate, Jeffrey Lord, eventually jumped in to claim that “hysteria is a neutral quality.”
Powers wasn’t having any of that, either.
“And yet it’s just women that usually are called hysterical,” she said.
“Hysteria” has historically been used to dismiss women going back to the word’s Greek root, which means “uterus.”
See the full exchange, posted online by Media Matters, above.
