One of the two Moms for Liberty co-founders who made an appearance on this week’s 60 Minutes ran to Fox News within hours of the segment’s airing to complain that CBS had “censored” her by editing their conversation with correspondent Scott Pelley.
The interview, recorded in October and released Sunday night, was at times contentious, with Pelley chiding them at various points for being “evasive,” dodging questions with “talking points” and avoiding his repeated questions about the group’s attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans.
But Tiffany Justice told Fox that she believed the interview had been edited deceptively to make her look bad.
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“I think that 60 Minutes came in expecting us to be Looney Tunes,” Justice said.
“They wanted some ranting and raving lunatic who was, you know, just wanting to get rid of… teaching and learning in general,” Justice continued. “And we sat down, and we wanted to have an honest conversation with them about the state of literacy in America.”
Justice even shared with the network her own full transcript of the conversation between Pelley, herself, and fellow Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich, which included several lengthy asides she presented about the dangers of “gender ideology” and comprehensive sex education in schools—as well as her reading from six different books she had deemed sexually explicit.
During the 60 Minutes segment, when asked point-blank by Pelley what ideology they were scared of their children being “indoctrinated” into at school, Descovich instead replied, “Let's just say children in America cannot read”—leading Pelley to say in a voiceover: “They often dodged questions with talking points.”
Justice took issue with that moment in particular, saying, “I had just spoken about gender ideology right before Mr. Pelley said that we weren't answering the question. So it just felt a little orchestrated.”
Her criticism of 60 Minutes quickly turned to criticism of the mainstream media in general—which, of course, seemingly does not include one of the country’s largest cable networks in Fox News.
“Americans are very concerned about the fact that they can no longer trust mainstream media. American parents are now relying on each other for information about what is best for their kids,“ Justice claimed. “It would be nice if mainstream media and if programs like 60 Minutes lived up to their storied history.”
