Donald Trump bashes CBS for editing of Kamala Harris ‘word salad’

The Republican’s campaign is calling for release of the full transcript of Kamala Harris’s interview on 60 Minutes.

With the switching of Kamala Harris’s answers, CBS News has given Donald Trump the justification to avoid a grilling. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump’s campaign is calling for CBS News to release the full transcript of Kamala Harris’s interview on its flagship 60 Minutes program after it edited out a “word salad” answer and substituted a more snappy response.

Mr Trump was criticised for backing out of his own interview opportunity with the prime time news program but is claiming ­vindication after its apparently favourable editing of Ms Harris.

The former president’s antagonism with CBS goes back to a combative interview on 60 Minutes during the election campaign four years ago when he clashed repeatedly with the presenter Lesley Stahl and walked off the set after calling her tough questions “fake news”.

Since becoming the Democrat candidate for president, Ms Harris had appeared on two left-leaning networks, CNN and MSNBC – the first in the company of Tim Walz, her running mate – and some friendly talk shows and podcasts before accepting the invitation from a show once seen as the gold standard of fair and insightful TV reporting.

Mr Trump initially accepted but pulled out. His spokesman called the plans for “live fact checking “unprecedented”.

This left the field clear for Harris to score a win by being prepared to face a tougher test. Her performance was mainly positive but the editing has called the exercise into question.

60 Minutes has previously been accused of anti-conservative bias after refusing to air an explanation by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, in response to accusations that he teamed up with a supermarket chain to distribute Covid-19 vaccines because it had donated to his campaign.

In the main broadcast of Harris’s interview, she is asked by the host Bill Whitaker whether Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, was listening to the Biden administration.

Harris was shown replying: “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.”

It sounded like a robust call for a ceasefire. However, in a trailer released on the 60 Minutes website, Ms Harris’s reply is more garbled and longwinded: “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.”

Given that Ms Harris has a reputation for making “word salad” statements that obfuscate rather than illuminate, the editing-out of one such response plays straight into the Trump narrative of a “fake news” media that seeks to mop up for the Democrats.

“During the full interview on Monday evening, the word salad was deceptively edited to lessen Kamala’s idiotic response,” said Karoline Leavitt, Mr Trump’s national press secretary. “Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad and what else did they choose not to air? The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from ­Kamala’s sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it. What do they, and ­Kamala, have to hide?”

Mr Trump was confronted about the Machiavellian purpose of his attacks on the media by Stahl in the 2020 interview, when she said: “Do you know what you told me a long time ago when I asked why you keep saying ‘fake media’ … You said to me, ‘I say that because I need to discredit you so that when you say negative things about me, no one will believe you’.” Mr Trump at the time replied: “I don’t have to discredit you … You have discredited yourself.”

With the switching of Harris’s answers, CBS News has given Mr Trump the justification he needs to bash the media he does not like and avoid a grilling by a prime time network show.

Mr Trump’s attacks on “fake news” are often self-serving to deflect from embarrassing truths, but his approach means the media has an even greater responsibility to ensure its actions are transparent and trustworthy.

When even a brand such as 60 Minutes falls into disrepute, the real loser is the standard of informed debate in the US.

Voters have had little opportunity to see the candidates having their feet held to the fire in this election campaign. It has instead been characterised more than any other in the modern age by softball interviews that the candidates are choosing in an American media environment that is increasingly atomised and partisan.

The Times