Though Lesley Stahl opened her controversial sit-down with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Sunday reading back a string of insults to the congresswoman’s face, the momentum for a confrontational interview couldn’t quite be sustained.
In voiceover, Stahl went on to call Greene “smart and fearless,” and ended the segment by pondering the question of whether the secessionist, QAnon-adjacent lawmaker would be able to “expand her brash MTG brand beyond the right-wing populist base.”
To open the 60 Minutes interview, which was filmed prior to Donald Trump’s indictment, Stahl told Greene: “We looked up some words that have been said about you… Crazy, Q-clown, Looney Tune, unhinged, moron. Pretty ugly stuff.”
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“Looks like the average troll in my Twitter feed,” Greene replied evenly. “So, I don’t really care.”
Then the congresswoman took the opportunity to double down on some of her own verbal taunts. When Stahl prompted her on a prior claim that “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles,” Greene hastened to confirm the baseless assertion.
“I would definitely say so,” she said. “They support grooming children.”
“They are not pedophiles,” Stahl said, in one of the interview’s rare instances of pushback. “Why would you say that?”
“Democrats—Democrats support, even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries,” Greene spewed, invoking an alt-right applause line that has been repeatedly debunked. “Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children.”
“Wow. OK,” Stahl replied. “But my question really is, can’t you fight for what you believe in without all that name-calling and without the personal attacks?”
The segment also featured Greene showing Stahl around her “conservative, largely white, working-class district,” complete with clips of fans rushing up to gush over and embrace their congresswoman on the street. (“Her constituents agree with her on the issues and like the way she fights for her beliefs,” Stahl opined over the footage.) A portion also showed Greene, a CrossFit fanatic, pumping iron in the gym as she spoke to Stahl.
Greene also dug in her heels on past social media activity, refusing to apologize for “liking” Facebook comments declaring that Nancy Pelosi should be shot and that the Parkland school shooting was a false-flag operation.
“Other people also ran my social media. I don’t think I did that,” she said, when asked about the Pelosi comment.
“Are you saying that you don’t stand by what’s on your social media?” Stahl asked.
“Well, of course I stand for what’s on my social media,” Greene shot back. “But at times not—you’re not always in control. We have all kinds of people that work on our social media.”
When Stahl tried to ask about her stance on Parkland, Greene insisted, “No, I never said Parkland was a false flag. No, I’ve never said that,” as the program displayed screenshots of her activity showing otherwise.
But as Stahl attempted to tell Greene that the 60 Minutes team had fact-checked her, the congresswoman bulldozed over her, demanding, “Have you fact-checked all my statements from kindergarten through 12th grade? And in college? And as I’ve paid my taxes, and never broken a law, and the only—I got a few speeding tickets. Do we need to talk about those too?”
Greene went on to compare Stahl to her online detractors, complaining that the focus was never “on anything good about me,” leading the CBS host to back down. “Let me button this up and we’ll move on,” Stahl said.
The choice to interview Greene was hit with scathing backlash when it was first announced by CBS News earlier this week, with critics decrying the platforming of a virulent conspiracy theorist who, in the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting that left six people dead, called for more guns in schools.
“You’re legitimizing a ghoul who harasses victims of school shootings, @60Minutes,” The West Wing actor Bradley Whitford tweeted on Saturday. “But yeah, @LesleyRStahl, you’ll get tons of attention! Not great for a generation traumatized by gun violence. Shame on you.”
Hours before the interview aired on Sunday night, Mary Trump, the former president’s niece, tweeted, “Hey, @60Minutes—I fixed it for you.” In a photoshopped screenshot of a 60 Minutes tweet promoting the interview, Trump had tweaked the copy to read: “American insurrectionist, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has no shame and isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how despicable and anti-American they are.”
“She sits down with former-journalist Leslie Stahl [sic],” the rewritten text continued, “who does her level best to normalize Greene’s fascism. DON’T WATCH tonight!”
