Dana Bash has criticized her interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she knows the interview was “just right” because it “p**ked” both left and right.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, CNN’s chief political correspondent acknowledged that Thursday’s primetime chat with Harris and her running mate Tim Walz drew criticism for everything from Bash’s opening line about what Harris would accomplish on her first day in office to his failure to ask follow-up questions at key moments, including allowing Harris to block a question about Trump’s attacks on her racial identity.

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

“My job wasn’t to get her,” Bash added. “My job was to clarify and understand her positions, her sensitivities, her approach, her goals.

“The right wing was super pissed at me because they said I was too soft on her, and the left wing was super pissed at me because they thought I was too hard on her, or using Trump talking points, which I don’t even really understand because the questions you need to ask her are the questions you need 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. hour since the June 27 presidential debate, co-moderated by Bash, which averaged more than 9.5 million viewers on the network.

Bash spoke at length about the interview and what she said about the sexism female newscasters face, in an interview promoting her new book, America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History (Harper Collins).

Bash’s book, co-authored with David Fisher (who has also written books with Bill O’Reilly and Dan Abrams), chronicles the violence and political chaos that led to Louisiana’s contested gubernatorial election of 1872. It provides accounts of election meddling and political violence that are still relevant today, told from the perspective of Louisiana Governor Henry Warmoth.

The book’s publication comes as Bash herself is under fire for the Harris interview. Bash decided not to press Harris further after the vice president refused to respond to Trump’s attacks on her racial identity.

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

Will Lanzoni/CNN

“Her non-answer was such a telling answer that I didn’t really feel like there was much need to follow up on it,” Bash said.

Bash acknowledged why she had to ask Harris the question: The vice president hadn’t given an interview since becoming a presidential candidate, and “it was a strange thing for Trump to do” at the National Association of Black Journalists convention when he suggested that Harris “happened to be black.”

Bash said Harris’ decision not to respond to Trump’s insults offers insight into her personality and how she plans to combat such attacks.

“The way she handles it — because unfortunately it’s only going to get worse because of the nature of politics, and it already is — it’s such a window into her; it’s not a window into her gender, it’s not a window into her race, it’s a window into how she approaches an attack, a challenge, how she approaches these things as a leader,” Bash said.

Bash admits that not asking for a follow-up was “an example of the 700 things I could have done differently” with the interview. “But to me, the way I took her answer was that she was trying to defuse it by not addressing it, which I understand.”

Tom Brenner/Reuters

Bash moderates State of the Union—every other week with Jake Tapper—and hosts CNN’s daily show Within politics. She is one of five women to hold the coveted Sunday show anchor chair. But the most traditionally prestigious anchor position, the networks’ daily newscasts, will become all-male after the election when Norah O’Donnell leaves CBS Evening News. Bash alleged that O’Donnell was a victim of sexism and said she worked harder than her rivals at NBC and ABC, who consistently garnered better ratings.

“I think Lester Holt and David Muir are fantastic journalists, and great anchors on the evening news,” Bash said. “But I challenge you to compare the way Norah did her very best with any of the other anchors, not just the ones that are there now, but maybe even historically.”

O’Donnell “works so hard, she always goes the extra mile—and she’s a mother of three teenagers,” Bash said. “She does it all because she loves it. That’s her journalism.”

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

The achievements of anchors like Katie Couric, O’Donnell, Jane Pauley and Bash herself have shown how far female anchors have come in the fight for equality with their male counterparts, Bash said. “Of course we have, but we’re not there yet, and we’re not nearly there yet, and I’m looking forward to the day that we do.”

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

“It’s funny. It’s changed,” Bash said. “You can age on television as a woman now — not all of it, not all of it, but older, although still not the same as men. I feel like men can stay on television forever, or in any job forever. It’s gotten better for women, but we’re not there yet. Also, there’s a sisterhood among women. My mother (Francie Weinman Schwartz) went to Northwestern to study journalism and then she worked 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. Now that there are so many of us, we have a common interest in what we do — especially now that a lot of us have kids and families and we’re balancing it all. We definitely click, which is nice.” (Bash has a 13-year-old son with her ex-husband, CNN’s national correspondent John King.)

Thanks to HarperCollins

Bash declined to comment on Megyn Kelly’s attacks on her CNN colleague Kaitlan Collins. Kelly attacked Collins as “boring” and a “cold-hearted b***h” last week 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 this is clickbait,” Bash said firmly. “Next question.”

In her new book about Henry Warmoth, Bash writes, “The love for him and the hatred for him, the passion people felt for him and against him, is eerily similar to what we see for 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 the months leading up to it,” Bash added. “And what he was a threat to, certainly in the moment that we were witnessing, and what he played a role in, was a peaceful transition of power. Whether you call that a threat to democracy or a threat to a democratic process within the broader democratic system, that’s for you to decide.”