Katie Couric will be a guest presenter on the long-standing show Jeopardy!, but she’s received backlash over her recent “condescending, elitist” comments about the GOP.
Couric is getting slammed for saying Trump supporters should be “deprogrammed,” Page Six reports.
Following the announcement by “Jeopardy!” producers that she will be making an appearance, Couric went on Bill Maher’s show and spoke in favor of Trump’s impeachment and Twitter ban.
“It’s really bizarre, isn’t it, when you think about how AWOL so many of these members of Congress have gotten,” the former “Today” host said when speaking about GOP Congressmen.
“But I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie.
“And the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.”
Her remarks worried producers of the Sony Pictures-created show, considering the show’s average viewers age is 64.2 years old.
“Jeopardy!” has always stayed clear of politics and acknowledges it has a very conservative audience.
“Katie’s comments so soon after she was announced as a host are very concerning to the producers. They are worried there will be a backlash against her. There have already been some complaints. Jeopardy viewers are quite a traditional bunch, and there’s fears she might be too polarizing after this. At the very least, she already appears to have ruled herself out of becoming the permanent host of the show.”
Couric, 64, is set to host a week of the iconic game show.
The Hill columnist and Fox News contributor Joe Concha also criticized her statements, saying, “This sort of rhetoric from Couric — which comes across as so condescending and elitist — underscores the divide between our media, which primarily resides in New York and Washington, and the rest of the country, which is moderate to center-right per multiple polls. And it’s why the industry is so mistrusted and frowned upon.”
Ken Jennings is the current guest host and recently issued an apology over his anti-Trump Twitter statements he made four years back.
“Hey, I just wanted to own up to the fact that over the years on Twitter, I’ve definitely tweeted some unartful and insensitive things. Sometimes they worked as jokes in my head, and I was dismayed to see how they read on screen,” he said a week before appearing.
