'Will not be soon forgotten': Trump threatens CBS over Harris’ 60 Minutes interview

15 October 2024

Former President Donald Trump is now apparently setting his sights on CBS after a cryptic post to his Truth Social account on Tuesday morning.

Just before 8 AM, the 45th president of the United States took to his social media platform to make an ominous threat against CBS over its edit of Vice President Kamala Harris' 60 Minutes interview earlier this month. While he didn't outright say what he would do to the network if he became president again, his language strongly suggests he's nursing a grudge against the news outlet that would last into a potential second term.

"I’ve done 60 Minutes many times, even back in the good ol’ days when Journalism was respected and legit, but I have never seen a very poor answer being REPLACED by another, totally unrelated answer, in order to save the person great personal and professional embarrassment," Trump wrote. "What 60 Minutes did in doing this was Election Interference and Fraud. It is the worst and most blatant scandal in Broadcast History, and will not be soon forgotten. Just watch!"

The former president backed out of a previous agreement to be interviewed on 60 Minutes, which is a longstanding tradition for presidential nominees of both parties going back several decades. However, he paid close attention to Harris' interview. Trump took notice when the network aired a clip of Harris giving a different answer to journalist Bill Whitaker in response to a question about Israel in a preview clip, compared to the answer she gave in the interview that aired on October 6.

In that exchange, Whitaker asked the vice president about whether the U.S. is losing its influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu given that he's ignored President Joe Biden's requests to not attack Lebanon. Harris' response in the preview clip that aired prior to the full interview was far more thorough than the response shown in the segment that aired.

In the preview clip, Harris gave a more lengthy answer about how the U.S. was committed to providing its top Middle Eastern ally with resources to defend itself from attacks like the approximately 200 missiles that Iran fired in early October (no one was killed in that attack). But in the interview that aired, her response was far more brief. In response to Whitaker's question about the Biden administration's relationship with Netanyahu, Harris said: "The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles."

According to the Poynter Institute — which provides commentary and analysis on the media industry — it is a common practice for broadcast news outlets to edit interviews for brevity and to make it easier for audiences to better understand what the interview subject is saying. CBS noted that Harris' full interview with Whitaker was approximately 45 minutes, while the segment that aired on 60 Minutes was just 20 minutes long.

The network maintains that it didn't splice together different answers to questions and present them as if they were Harris' authentic answers to Whitaker's questions. Media industry ethics also strongly dictate that answers not be deceptively edited to make the subject appear to say something different than what was actually said.

Kelly McBride, who is the senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, said that while CBS didn't appear to violate any ethics rules, they could snuff out the controversy by releasing a full transcript of the vice president's 60 Minutes interview.

"Once you cast doubt on something, it’s really on the news organization to explain and demonstrate why it’s trustworthy, and that shouldn’t be hard to do," McBride said.

This isn't the first time Trump has suggested reprisal against a media outlet for perceived unfair treatment. After the September 10 debate in which ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked Trump's false claims about Haitian migrants and the 2020 election, the ex-president suggested he would revoke ABC's broadcast license if he won a second term. He has also openly contemplated suing Muir in particular for his fact-checks.

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