The Donald Trump campaign responded with a harsh statement to a defiant comment made by “60 Minutes” about its controversial editing of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month. The campaign argued that the show essentially admitted to editing the interview to make Harris appear more favorable and called on CBS to release the full transcript.
“60 Minutes just admitted to doing exactly what President Trump accused them of. They edited a different response – from another part of her answer – to make Kamala Harris appear less incoherent than she actually was. Their statement is not a denial; it is an admission that they did exactly what they were accused of,” the Trump campaign said on Sunday. “This is yet another reminder of how biased ’60 Minutes’ is and how right President Trump was to decline their invitation to be subjected to their fake news manipulation. Release the transcript!”
CBS News did not immediately respond on Monday when asked if it would release the transcript. The network has ignored calls to release the transcript or the unedited footage since the controversy began. After weeks of silence despite mounting backlash over the interview, CBS issued a statement on Sunday evening addressing the outrage that followed airing two different answers to the same question during the “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month with the Democratic nominee. The show stated that former President Trump’s claims that the program had deceived its audience were “false.”
“Former President Donald Trump is accusing ’60 Minutes’ of deceitful editing of our October 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false,” the statement began, noting that “60 Minutes” had provided an excerpt of the interview to ‘Face the Nation’ that used a longer portion of her response than the one shown on ’60 Minutes.’ “Same question, same answer, but a different part of the response. The segment shown on ’60 Minutes’ was more succinct, allowing time for other topics to be covered in a wide-ranging 21-minute segment.”
The statement also mentioned that Trump had “pulled out of his interview with ’60 Minutes,'” while the vice president participated. The Trump campaign denied ever formally accepting the invitation for the interview.
“Our longstanding invitation to former President Trump remains open,” the statement continued. “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 controversy began earlier this month when CBS News aired two different answers to the same question in the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris.
The vice president was initially mocked by conservatives on social media when footage of her offering a lengthy “word salad” was aired by CBS’s “Face the Nation” and on social media to promote the “60 Minutes” interview, in response to Bill Whitaker asking why it seemed like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t listening to the U.S. However, the vice president’s lengthy answer did not make it to the primetime version of “60 Minutes,” and a shorter answer to the same question was shown instead.
CBS News has since faced criticism, with some believing that the network used a more flattering clip of Harris’s response following backlash to the initial version.
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