CBS News admitted Sunday night that it had cut a response 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’ response was edited to make the Democratic nominee look better was “false.”
The network broke its silence more than a week after the Trump campaign demanded the program release an “unedited transcript” of Harris’ full 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 meeting with Harris, 60, conducted by correspondent Bill Whitaker.
“Well, Bill … the work that we’ve done has resulted in a number of moves in that region by Israel that have been driven very much by or as a result of many things, including our advocacy of what should happen in the region,” Harris said. in the promo video shared by Face The Nation on X.
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However, when the interview aired the following evening, Harris responded, “We will not stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need to end this war.”
“60 Minutes provided an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer portion of her response than the one on 60 Minutes,” CBS News said in a statement.
“Same question. Same answer. But another part of the answer.”
“When we edit any interview, be it a politician, athlete or movie star, we try to be clear, precise and accurate. Her response portion on 60 Minutes was more concise, allowing time for other subjects in a broad 21-minute segment,” they added.
Trump, 78, declined to appear on the “60 Minutes” pre-election special, citing problems with the network’s coverage of first son Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” during the 2020 cycle.
“Our longstanding 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 they did exactly what President Trump accused them of doing,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “They edited in a different answer — from another part of her answer — to make Kamala Harris sound less incoherent than she actually was.
“Their statement is not a denial, it’s 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 right President Trump was to decline their invitation to submit to fake news hacking.”
Trump himself lashed out at the media on Sunday when he called for the entire clip to be taken down.
“I have never seen anything like this. She gave a terrible, incompetent answer on a news program … and so she gives an answer that shows she’s dumb or incompetent or something is wrong with her,” said the 45th president of Fox News, Howard Kurtz on early on Sunday.
“It’s so bad that the people at CBS say, ‘We’re going to do a little edit.’ … They take out the whole funny answer, and it was a long answer, and replace it with a much shorter answer that you have to you did a whole other topic, which also didn’t make sense, but wasn’t that incompetent.”
CBS News has yet to release an unedited video or transcript of Harris’ full interview.
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