CBS News has finally addressed the controversy surrounding its edited interview with Kamala Harris. Critics claim the edit involved cutting and replacing parts of her response to a question.
In a statement, CBS defended its decision, asserting that the portion of Harris’s answer they used was “from the same response, but a different part of it.” They explained that the edited version on 60 Minutes was made more concise to fit within a 21-minute segment covering a wide range of topics.
“Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false,” the statement said.
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“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. 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.”
This statement comes after CBS was accused of replacing part of Harris’s original, seemingly incoherent answer with a separate sentence from earlier in the interview, sparking allegations of media manipulation and election interference. Critics, including supporters of Donald Trump, have labeled the edit as deceptive and un-American.
Following the revelation, President Trump responded, calling Kamala Harris a “moron” and demanding CBS’s broadcast license be revoked. He called the interview edit “the greatest fraud in broadcast history.”
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“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,” Trump said 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.”
Trump’s campaign account also urged CBS to release the full, unedited transcript of the interview to clarify the situation.
In their statement, CBS also noted that Trump had previously pulled out of his own scheduled interview with 60 Minutes, while Vice President Harris chose to participate.
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