Katie Couric still can’t believe how badly Sarah Palin fumbled what was supposed to be a softball question in their infamous 2008 interview together.
Couric, who is now a “global news anchor” for Yahoo, said Monday in a discussion with David Axelrod that the question that tripped up the former Alaska governor was actually some warm-up fluff that she had no idea would later become a campaign gaffe.
“I remember thinking, ‘I’m just going to, when I ask a question, I’m just not going to interrupt her,'” the reporter said. “‘I’m not going to … help guide her in any way. I’m just going to let her kind of say what she thinks so we could make a fair assessment.'”
“[I]ronically,” she added, “that one walk-and-talk question where I was simply getting B-roll and trying to ascertain what made her feel so passionately, and sort of to be so steadfast and some of her positions, I wanted to know where that comes from, you know where, ‘How are you shaped? What do you read?'”
In their 2008 sit-down together, Couric asked the newly minted vice presidential candidate about her reading habits.
“And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this, to stay informed and to understand the world?” the then-NBC News reporter asked.
“I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media,” Palin answered.
“But what ones specifically? I’m curious,” Couric persisted.
“Um, all of them. Any of them that have been in front of me over all these years,” the former governor said.
“Can you name any of them?” Couric asked as a follow-up.
“I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news,” Palin dodged. The moment went on to become a gaffe on the campaign trail, and a lingering embarrassment for Palin.
“I don’t know if it was going to be William F. Buckley. I thought maybe the Bible had a big influence on the way she saw things, or you know who knows,” Couric said Monday in reference to what she thought Palin would say in response to the question. “And I think she was getting pretty aggravated by me at that point, and that’s when she said, ‘Everything and anything.'”
The Yahoo anchor then suggested how the former vice presidential nominee should have answered the question.
“I would have answered, if I have been running, I would have said, ‘I read every newspaper in Alaska because those are my constituents, and I need to really understand every issue that’s going on in Alaska. Then of course I read every national newspaper, and I’m just, I’m constantly googling things because I love to learn.'”
Axelrod, who served in 2008 as Obama’s chief campaign strategist and media adviser, chimed in, “I’m sure that’s what she meant to say.”
Couric laughed.
“I felt bad because she was so angry,” she told Axelrod. “It was very interesting because right after, everyone thought the questions were fair. Democrats, Republicans, nobody said that those were ‘gotcha’ questions.”
“There were some hard questions there, by the way, you know, they were very thoughtful, interesting questions,” she added. “That one just got the lion’s share of attention.”
Though Palin responded initially to the flubbed interview by alleging media bias, she relented in 2015 and admitted that Couric’s warm-up question was actually pretty fair.
“Was it a fair question? Yeah, sure,” Palin said in a CBS News interview. “I had a crappy answer, but it was a fair question.”
