Cooper on withdrawing from Harris VP consideration: ‘Just not the right time’

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) defended his decision on Sunday to withdraw from consideration to be Vice President Harris’s running mate.

“Yes, I did let the Harris campaign know early in the process that this was just not the right time for me or my state,” Cooper said Sunday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”

MSNBC hosts Michael Steele and Symone Sanders-Townsend noted that part of Cooper’s decision to take himself out of the running for vice president was because it would potentially give North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) a chance to seize power in the state.

They played clips of Robinson’s past controversial statements, including one clip in which he said gay and transgender people were “filth” and another clip saying abortion is “about killing the child because you aren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

Cooper said that under North Carolina’s provisions, the lieutenant governor becomes the governor every time the sitting governor leaves the state. He said that was part of the reason he removed himself from consideration.

“And when you think about it, it really doesn’t make sense if I’m testifying in Congress in Washington, or I’m recruiting business in another state or another country, or I’m at an in-law’s funeral out of state. It doesn’t make any sense that the lieutenant governor would take over, but when I was in Japan on a trip, the lieutenant governor held a press conference and signed a proclamation honoring the state of Israel, I guess to make up for his antisemitic comments and for denying the Holocaust,” he said.

“But we believed that it was quite possible that if I were on the ticket as vice president, he could be doing something every week, and he may or may not be successful in doing it. But he would certainly cause distraction that would be magnified times 10 because of what’s happening at the presidential level. So that was certainly part of the reason why I did that,” he added.

He also said that Harris “has a wealth of candidates from which to choose.”

“We’re going to welcome them to Raleigh, or maybe Chapel Hill, but we’ll welcome them to North Carolina on Thursday of next week with a big rally kickoff winning North Carolina. I got that 2008 feel. We won North Carolina for Barack Obama; I have that same feeling now. We’re gonna really get to work here,” he added.

Harris is expected to announce her pick for vice president in the coming days. Numerous Democrats are reportedly on the shortlist to be her running mate, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).