CBS News recently addressed the editing scandal during Vice President Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview. Conservatives have blasted the network after it appeared that the show deceptively edited Harris’s word salad answer about the Israel-Hamas conflict to make her sound more coherent. However, the network has denied the allegations in a recent statement, labeling them “false.”
Following prolonged silence on the controversy, CBS News released a statement over the weekend after it was apparent that “60 Minutes” aired two very different answers from Vice President Harris. “Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false,” the statement said, acknowledging the intense backlash.
The statement continued, “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.”
CBS’s statement then invited former President Trump for an interview, which he had previously declined. “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,” the network continued.
Following the statement from CBS News, the Trump campaign responded, urging the network to release the full, unedited transcript of the interview, which they have not done. “60 Minutes just admitted to doing exactly what President Trump accused them of doing. They edited in a different response – from another part of her answer – to make Kamala Harris sound less incoherent than she really was,” the Trump campaign said.
“Their statement is not a denial, it is an admission that they did exactly what they were accused of,” the campaign continued. “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!”
The statement from CBS followed comments from Trump during a Fox News interview, in which he called for the Kamala Harris interview to be taken off the air. Trump blasted “Harris'” incompetent answer which was substantially edited. “I’ve never seen anything like it. She gave a horrible, incompetent answer on a news program… and so she gives an answer that shows that she’s dumb or incompetent or something’s wrong with her,” Trump told Fox News host Howard Kurtz.
The former president continued sounding off on the interview, stating, “It’s so bad that the people at CBS say we’re going to do a little editing… They take the whole ridiculous answer out, and it was a long answer and replace it with a much shorter answer that you had to do with a totally different subject, which also didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t as incompetent.”
Watch the editing of the Kamala Harris interview below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
"*" indicates required fields