Comments about his lawsuit against the show, claims that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen,” and attempts to convince journalist Norah O’Donnell to accept that crime has decreased in Washington DC since her election were removed from a lengthy interview on “60 Minutes” with President Donald Trump before it aired on CBS on Sunday night, prompting criticism from Trump’s opponents and the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) itself.
Key data
CBS aired a 28-minute version of O’Donnell’s interview with Trump on Sunday night before posting an extended 73-minute version online and posting a full transcript of the conversation, sparking a backlash from opponents on both sides who criticized the network for what it decided not to include in the abbreviated version that aired on television.
Among the topics not included in the initial edit were Trump’s comments about his lawsuit against CBS last year and when he sued the network for editing a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in a way that made her look good ahead of the 2024 election.
Trump has not commented on the broadcast since it was posted.
What did Trump say that was removed from the broadcast program?
Trump, who told O’Donnell he could cut his comment from the interview, said: “’60 Minutes’ was forced to pay me a lot of money… You can’t have fake news. You have to have legitimate news.” He then went on to say that he sees “good things happening in the news” thanks to the recent acquisition of Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, by David Ellison’s Skydance Media: “I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to a free, open, good press in a long time” (last month Trump called the Ellisons “big supporters of mine”).
Among other comments removed from the initial broadcast were claims that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” and an attempt to get O’Donnell, who lives in Washington, DC, to admit that he had seen a reduction in crime in the city since taking office.
After being asked several times if he had noticed a difference, O’Donnell said he hadn’t “left the house as much,” to which Trump responded, “Oh, that’s not a fair answer. You see the difference.” Trump acknowledged several times that the interview was going to be edited, saying things like “you don’t have to put this in” and “you don’t have to wear that.”
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Key background
The interview was the first Trump did with “60 Minutes” in five years and the first since his lawsuit over the Harris interview. She sued for $20 billion, claiming the show misleadingly edited Harris’ response to a question about the war between Israel and Hamas after a preview of the interview used a different answer than the official broadcast.
The network later released a full transcript of the interview showing that it posted the first sentence of its response in the preview and the last sentence during the show. Paramount later agreed to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit and admitted no wrongdoing.
Networks often edit interviews for clarity and length to fit their broadcast schedule.
Key criticism
CBS and O’Donnell received criticism from elected officials and other journalists for the way the interview was conducted and the heavy edits.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on
Jonathan Uriarte, a spokesman for FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, said the edits and Trump’s apparent awareness that they would be made “could qualify as news distortion and merit an investigation” under the established standard.
Political commentator Tim Miller posted on
Former MSNBC host Joy Reid criticized the style of the interview itself, saying, “Norah let Trump lie and lie with little resistance or provision of corrective facts.”
Contra
On Monday morning, the White House rejected claims that Trump’s interview edits were comparable to Harris’s edits: “They deceptively edited Kamala’s responses to make it look somewhat coherent before an election, idiot, and then didn’t release the unedited transcript/interview,” the White House Rapid Response account posted in response to Schumer. “That is not the same as editing due to time constraints (And the unedited transcript/interview was published).”
This article was originally published in Forbes US
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