Former president Donald Trump aggressively lashed out at CBS News on Wednesday, alleging the network’s 60 Minutes favorably edited its televised interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her sound better.
“I've never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced ("cut and pasted") Lyin' Kamala's answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again, some by as many as four times in a single sentence or thought, all in an effort, possibly illegal as part of the ‘News Division,’ which must be licensed, to make her look ‘more Presidential,’ or a least, better,” Trump wrote in a Dickens-length sentence featured in a Truth Social post.
The twice-impeached, convicted felon Republican nominee for president bellowed that the public was owed a “MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY” and called for CBS to be investigated.
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Trump was seemingly responding, at least in part, to online outcry by conservatives who complained that the network appeared to air two different answers by Harris to the same question on different days, which led Fox News to seize on the claim.
CBS did air a lengthier exchange between 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker and Harris about Israel during a Sunday preview of her interview on Sunday’s Face the Nation. The same exchange was edited down for the final 60 Minutes broadcast, but the comments that aired on 60 Minutes were also included in the exchange that CBS ran a day earlier.
What upset the Trump campaign is that part of Harris’ answers that were broadcast on Face the Nation—and which Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt mocked as “epic word salad”—were left out when 60 Minutes went to air.
“The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,” Harris said in reply to a follow-up question by Whitaker about whether Neyanyahu was listening to or receptive to American diplomatic efforts.
The meandering sentence, which was roundly lambasted on conservative social media, did not appear during the 60 Minutes broadcast a day later. The news magazine did post the lengthier exchange on its YouTube channel, as well as various other footage that did not make the broadcast cut.
The exchange about Israel between Whitaker and Harris that was broadcast on 60 Minutes lasted roughly one minute and ten seconds, while the extended version shown on Face the Nation and posted on 60 Minutes’s Youtube channel runs two minutes and twenty seconds.
As even Fox noted, it is not uncommon for televised interviews to be edited as shows like 60 Minutes have finite airtimes that are cut down by having to accommodate for commercial breaks.
Trump—having spent over four decades as a public figure, including seven years as the producer and host of a reality television show—would know this. He also agreed to a sitdown with 60 Minutes, but backed out without explanation.
Nevertheless, the Trump campaign used the opportunity to call for the release of “the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview.”
CBS News and 60 Minutes did not reply to a request for comment.
