Former President Donald Trump’s legal team told CBS News on Monday he was considering litigation if the news outlet did not release the full transcript of its “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
CBS has come under fire in recent days after it aired two different versions of Harris’ response to a question on Israel, one in a promotional clip online and the other in the actual broadcast interview. Trump’s legal team argued that CBS edited Harris’ answer to tilt the scales in her favor and mislead the public ahead of the presidential election.
“Such manipulative editing was aimed at causing confusion among the electorate regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s abilities, intelligence, and appeal,” Trump lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik wrote in a letter to CBS. “News organizations such as CBS have a responsibility to accurately represent the truth of events, not distort an interview to try and make their preferred candidate appear coherent and decisive, which Harris most certainly is not. Due to CBS’ actions, the public cannot distinguish which Kamala Harris they are seeing: the candidate or the puppet of a behind-the-scenes editor.”
Trump’s letter demanded that CBS release the full unedited transcript of the interview to the public and to preserve all documents and communications about the interview “in contemplation of possible litigation.”
“The executives and producers at CBS, and 60 Minutes in particular, are unquestionably aware that the purpose behind editing the Interview was to confuse the electorate and portray the Vice President in a better light than a full, unedited transcript would reveal. Responsible news sources must be held accountable to the highest standards,” Paltzik wrote.
The edited portion in question came during a discussion on Israel when host Bill Whitaker said, “But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.”
In a promotional video posted online, Harris responded to Whitaker by saying: “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.”
In the interview that aired, Harris responded by saying: “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.”
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CBS has responded to criticism of its editing by saying it just broadcasted different parts of the “same answer.”
“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,” CBS said on Sunday. “Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response.”
On Truth Social, Trump said that the editing of the interview could “be the Biggest Scandal in Broadcast History!”
“When will CBS release their Transcript of the fraudulent Interview with Comrade Kamala Harris? They changed her answer in order to make Kamala look intelligent, rather than ‘dumb as a rock,’” he posted. “CBS MUST GET THE TRANSCRIPT OUT NOW — Litigation has already started. Harris wasn’t able to put two sentences together, so they completely removed her answer, and put in another one.”
