CBS News acknowledged Sunday night that it had trimmed an answer from Vice President Kamala Harris about the war in the Middle East during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired earlier this month.
In a statement, CBS News insisted that former President Donald Trump’s claim that Harris’ answer was edited to make the Democratic nominee look better was “false.”
The network broke its silence more than a week after Trump’s campaign demanded the program release an “unedited transcript” of the full Harris interview after it emerged her “word salad” had been cut from the final broadcast.
On Oct.6, CBS Sunday morning public affairs program “Face The Nation” posted a lengthy clip previewing the sitdown with Harris, 60, conducted by correspondent Bill Whitaker.
“Well, Bill … 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 the promo video shared by “Face The Nation” on X.
When the interview aired the following evening, however, Harris answered: “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.”
“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,” the CBS News statement said.
“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,” they added.
Trump, 78, declined to take part in the “60 Minutes” pre-election special, citing issues with the network’s coverage of first son Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” during the 2020 cycle.
“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 statement said.
“60 Minutes just admitted to doing exactly what President Trump accused them of doing,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “They edited in a different response – from another part of her answer – to make Kamala Harris sound less incoherent than she really was.
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“Their statement is not a denial, it is an admission that they did exactly what they were accused of,” Leavitt added. “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.”
Trump himself railed against the outlet on Sunday when he called for the entire clip to be taken down.
“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,” the 45th president told Fox News’ Howard Kurtz earlier Sunday.
“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.”
CBS News has yet to release an unedited video or transcript of the full Harris interview.
