Top campaign adviser admits Kamala Harris messed up planned response to defining question: 'What the hell was that?'

A top adviser of the failed Kamala Harris presidential campaign admits that the former candidate did not use a planned response to a defining question asked during an otherwise softball interview on "The View."

Harris senior campaign adviser Stephanie Cutter says she was shocked at how Harris answered when she was asked if she would have done anything differently from then-President Joe Biden over the previous four years. The question was an opportunity to separate herself from the unpopular president, but she refused to do so.

Cutter says she was stunned because they had practiced a different response to just that question.

“There is not a thing that comes to mind," Harris said at the time. "I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact, the work that we have done."

The answer was used by Republicans as a cudgel to beat down Harris and tell Americans that there would be no distinction between a Harris presidency and that of the ailing Biden.

Cutter says she was stunned because they had practiced a different response to just that question.

"What the hell was that?" Cutter said she thought to herself. "That’s not what we practiced."

The admission will be included in the upcoming book, "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

Another Harris ally told the reporters that the moment was a "money shot" for ads by the opposing campaign.

Famed Democrat strategist James Carville had previously tagged the moment as the single greatest cause of Harris' defeat by Trump.

"That’s the most devastating answer you could imagine,” he said.

"'How would you be different than Biden?' That’s the one question that you exist to answer, all right? That is it," Carville ranted. "That’s the money question. That's the one you want. That’s the one that everybody wants to know the answer to. And you freeze! You literally freeze and say, ‘Well, I can’t think of anything.’"

He went on to say that Harris failed because of a lack of competent messaging despite having every other advantage.

Fox News said Harris' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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