Dana Bash has hit back at critics of her interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she knew it was “exactly the right thing to do” because it “angered” both the left and the right.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, CNN’s chief political correspondent acknowledged that last Thursday’s prime-time meeting with Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, drew heavy criticism for all sorts of reasons, from Bash’s opening line about what Harris would accomplish on her first day in office to her failure to ask questions at key moments — for example, when she fended off a question from Harris about Trump’s attacks on her racial identity.

“The fact that no one was happy in their hardened camps makes me think I was probably in exactly the right place,” Bash told The Daily Beast. “Everything I do, I can think of about 2,000 things I would have said or done differently.”

“My job was not to pin them down,” Bash added. “My job was to illuminate and understand their positions, their sensibilities, their approach and their goals.”

“The right wing was super mad at me because they said I was being too soft on her, and the left wing was super mad because they said I was being too hard on her or using Trump’s arguments, which I don’t even really understand, because the questions you have to ask her are the questions you have to ask her. Whether Trump uses them or not, they are what they are.”

The interview drew 6.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s final ratings from the same day. It was CNN’s best 9 p.m. broadcast since the June 27 presidential debate co-hosted by Bash, which averaged more than 9.5 million viewers on the network.

Bash spoke at length about the interview, saying that sexism faced by female news anchors in an interview to promote her new book. America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History (HarperCollins).

Bash’s book, co-authored with David Fisher (who also co-wrote books with Bill O’Reilly and Dan Abrams), chronicles the violence and political chaos that led to Louisiana’s contentious gubernatorial election of 1872—with accounts of voter rigging and political violence that resonate to this day—and is told from the perspective of Louisiana Governor Henry Warmoth.

The book’s release comes just as Bash herself is under scrutiny for the Harris interview, in which Bash decided not to press Harris any further after the vice president refused to respond to Trump’s attacks on her ethnic identity.

“Same old, hackneyed script,” said Harris. “Next question, please.”

Will Lanzoni/CNN

“Their non-response spoke volumes, so I didn’t feel like much more was needed,” Bash said.

Bash was clear about why she had to ask Harris this question: The vice president had not given an interview since being nominated as presidential candidate, and besides, it was “strange what Trump did at the National Association of Black Journalists convention” when he suggested that Harris “accidentally turned black.”

Bash said Harris’ decision not to engage with Trump’s insult provides insight into her personality and the way she plans to respond to such attacks.

“How she handles this – because unfortunately, because of the nature of politics, it’s only going to get worse, and it already is – is a window into who she is as a person. It’s not a window into her gender, it’s not a window into her race, it’s a window into her approach to an attack, a challenge, how she approaches these things as a leader,” Bash said.

Bash admits that not asking for a follow-up was “one example of the 700 things I could have done differently in the interview.” “But I took her response to mean that she was trying to defuse the situation by not engaging in it, which I understand.”

Tom Brenner/Reuters

Beat up moderates On the state of the nation—alternating weekly with Jake Tapper—and hosts CNN’s daily show domestic policy. She is one of five women to fill the coveted Sunday morning anchor chair. But the traditionally most prestigious anchor position, the networks’ evening newscasts, will be filled exclusively by men after the election when Norah O’Donnell leaves the post. CBS Evening News. Bash accused O’Donnell of being a victim of sexism and said she worked harder than her consistently higher-rated competitors at NBC and ABC.

“I think Lester Holt and David Muir are fantastic journalists and great evening news anchors,” Bash said. “However, I challenge you to compare the way Norah worked her ass off to that of any other anchor, not just those who are there now, but maybe even those in history.”

O’Donnell “works so hard, she still gives it her all – and she’s a mother of three teenagers,” Bash said. “She does all this because she loves it. This is her journalism.”

Women in the news industry have to “work 10 times harder than men to prove themselves,” Bash said, and O’Donnell “does it like she’s Ginger Rogers, only backwards and in high heels.”

The successes of presenters such as Katie Couric, O’Donnell, Jane Pauley and Bash herself have shown how far female presenters have come in the fight for equality with their male colleagues, said Bash. “Of course we have, but we are not there yet and not even close, and I long for the day when that happens.”

Aging on screen has improved slightly for women – and there is now a “sisterhood” among women in the news industry, Bash claimed.

“It’s crazy. That’s changed,” Bash said. “Today, as a woman on TV, you can get older — not all of them, not quite, but older, but still not like men. I feel like men can stay on TV forever, or in any job forever. It’s gotten better for women, but we’re not there yet. Also, there’s a kind of sisterhood among women. My mother (Francie Weinman Schwartz) studied journalism at Northwestern and then was in local news. She was one of the first women in the newsroom, and it was brutal. Women were brutal to each other because they were competing for that one spot. There are so many of us right now, and we have a commonality in what we do — especially now that a lot of us have kids and families and we’re juggling everything. We definitely have a connection with each other, which is nice.” (Bash has a 13-year-old son with her ex-husband, John King, CNN’s chief national news correspondent.)

Courtesy of HarperCollins

Bash declined to comment on Megyn Kelly’s attacks on her CNN colleague Kaitlan Collins. Kelly had attacked Collins last week as a “boring” and a “cold-hearted bitch” after Collins appeared on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast and defended CNN. (Kelly acknowledged that she did not know Collins personally.)

“I’m going to give you a Kamala Harris answer and say that’s clickbait,” Bash said firmly. “Next question.”

Writing about Henry Warmoth in her new book, Bash said, “The love and hate for him, the passion that people felt both for and against him, are eerily similar to what we see with Donald Trump.”

“I think the answer to the question of whether Donald Trump is a threat to democracy is what happened on January 6, 2021, and in the months leading up to it,” Bash added. “And what he threatened, at least at the time we experienced it, and what he helped to achieve, was a peaceful transfer of power. Whether you call that a threat to democracy or a democratic process within the broader democratic system – that’s for you to decide.”