An outspoke critic of President Donald Trump, journalist Katie Couric has often found herself in MAGA’s crosshairs for being. But she’s not tamping down her opinions anytime soon.
“Donald Trump has called me a ‘has been,’” Couric told The Daily Beast, “but I’m just happy to be a ‘has been’ who can speak her mind.”
“I mean, honey, I’ve been in the tabloids for years… they’ve accused me of having a threesome with Matt Lauer,” Couric continued, referencing her disgraced former TODAY co-host, who was ousted from the morning show in 2017 due to sexual misconduct allegations. “There’s a lot I can handle.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Couric and nearly a hundred other of the country’s top female leaders convened in New York at the restaurant Marea for The Daily Beast’s Chief Creative and Content Officer Joanna Coles’ latest Power 100 luncheon.
“I always look forward to this lunch, but never more than this year,” Coles said at the event. “It’s been such a long year, and it’s so nice to see so many people working incredibly hard in this room to maintain the values that America holds strong.”
The women — top names in fashion, business, media and more — addressed what’s changed for them amid Trump’s second term.
For Couric, 68, using her voice is how she pushes back against the “destruction of so many norms” she’s watched unfold in recent months.
In 2017, the former anchor at NBC, CBS and ABC co-founded the multi-platform new company Katie Couric Media alongside her husband, John Molner — which, according to her, allows her to speak her mind.
“I’m an independent journalist now, I don’t have any corporate overlords kind of trying to influence how I report on things that are happening,” she said. “I feel incredibly liberated.”
This independence stands firm in the face of Trump’s unprecedented assault on the mainstream media. The president has long challenged the industry’s credibility—including through a barrage of insults launched at reporters.
Within the first 100 days of his second term, Trump launched 64 attacks on journalists and media brands on Truth Social, pardoned 13 people convicted or charged for attacking journalists on January 6, 2021 and opened six inquiries into media companies with the Federal Communications Commission, according to data from Reporters Without Borders.
Couric has a long history of facing down Trump loyalists. In August, she faced backlash after calling Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “a disgrace.”
“This is so sad. I grew up going to the Kennedy Center, which was about 20 minutes from our house in Arlington,” she wrote in an Instagram post featuring members of the “Kennedy Center family” at an opera event. “What they’ve done to it is a disgrace.”
Her remarks sparked backlash from loyalists including Richard Grenell, a former Trump ambassador and the man the president installed to execute his vision for the Kennedy Center.
Grenell and his colleagues used the Kennedy Center’s official social media accounts to go on a posting spree in response to Couric’s comments. “The Kennedy Center is for EVERYONE. That includes Mrs. Couric,” one pointed Instagram post read.
On Tuesday, Couric shrugged off Grenell’s public ridicule as just plain “weird.”
“I just thought, wow, they’re really thin-skinned — I’m obviously getting to somebody in that institution,” Couric said. She added that she remains “unfazed” by Trump and his cronies.
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