60 Minutes has responded to Donald Trump‘s accusation that the CBS newsmagazine edited its Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make the interview more favorable to her — and the Trump campaign issued its own statement in response.
On Sunday, the show released the following statement in response to the Republican presidential candidate:
Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false.
60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes. Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.
Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated.
Our long-standing invitation to former President Trump remains open. If he would like to discuss the issues facing the nation and the Harris interview, we would be happy to have him on 60 Minutes.
In response, the Trump campaign released its own statement: “60 Minutes just admitted to doing exactly what President Trump accused them of doing,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary. “They edited in a different response — from another part of her answer — to make Kamala Harris sound less incoherent than she really was. Their statement is not a denial, it is an admission that they did exactly what they were accused of. This is another reminder of how hopelessly biased 60 Minutes is, and how correct President Trump was to decline their invitation to be subjected to their fake news hackery. Release the transcript!”
Trump has called the show’s broadcast of the Harris interview a “giant fake news scam” and has suggested that CBS was trying to help her. The accusations arose after it was pointed out online that Harris gave a different answer to a question in a teaser clip that aired CBS’ on Face the Nation from what was shown on 60 Minutes. The question in question was about the Biden administration’s sway on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening,” 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker says to Harris in the interview.
In the teaser clip, Harris briefly pauses and then says, “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.”
During the 60 Minutes broadcast, Harris quickly responds, “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
On his Truth Social feed, Trump wrote, “Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, to make her look better.”
Trump has since called for CBS to lose its FCC license over the interview. FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel dismissed that idea, adding that Trump’s “threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored.”
Meanwhile, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley recently said that the Trump campaign offered “shifting explanations” for why the former president was backing out of the interview.
