CBS News has released its entire, unedited 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris at the urging of the FCC and Donald Trump.
Trump had sued the network for $10 billion, alleging the interview was deceitfully edited to help Harris in the race for the White House.
CBS News has released the full video of its interaction with Harris, along with a transcript at the behest of the FCC, which has been investigating the network.
In a statement, the network said it is commonplace to edit interviews “for time, space, or clarity.”
“In making these edits, 60 Minutes is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public – all while working within the constraints of broadcast television,” CBS News continued.
“The issue here concerns one question from 60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris: whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is listening to the Biden-Harris Administration. We broadcast a longer portion of the vice president’s answer on Face the Nation and broadcast a shorter excerpt from the same answer on 60 Minutes the next day. Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer. As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president’s answers to 60 Minutes’ many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers. 60 Minutes’ hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves,” the statement added.
In a post to social media, President Trump said “CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before. They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview … CBS should lose its license and the cheaters at 60 Minutes should all be thrown out, and this disreputable “NEWS” show should be immediately terminated.”
Elsewhere on social media, many shared their opinions, ranging for echos of Trump’s sentiments to questioning what the revelation meant for the program going forward.
Members of the FCC differed on their reaction to the release of the interview. Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner, shared that FCC shouldn’t be doing the bidding of the Trump administration, and added that the video shows CBS did nothing wrong in its interview. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called CBS’ conduct “concerning” through the ordeal.
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