Why are Republicans freaking out over an old Harris ‘60 Minutes’ interview?
On Thursday, President Donald Trump called for “60 Minutes” to be “immediately terminated” after the network, CBS, released the unedited video and transcripts of an October interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The release came in response to weeks of unfounded right-wing allegations that CBS had edited Harris’ answers in the interview that aired to aid her campaign.
“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, Trump fumed on Truth Social.
But that’s not what happened.
“In reporting the news, journalists regularly 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 said in a statement.
The network released three videos showing the context of the interview:
CBS noted that they originally broadcasted two edits of Harris’ response to a question about Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one on “Face the Nation,” and a longer cut of the interview on “60 Minutes” itself.
“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,” the release said.
This is standard procedure in TV news, but Trump has sued the network anyway, and recently installed Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has launched an investigation into CBS.
“Having now seen these materials, I see no reason to continue pursuing this investigation. The F.C.C. should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions, Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner at the FCC, told The New York Times.
There are fears that CBS might settle the lawsuit because the network’s parent company, Paramount, is hoping to merge with Skydance, which requires federal approval.
Trump and other Republicans are fixated on this controversy because conservatives have spent more than 60 years arguing that the media is “liberal” and biased against the right. Right-wing institutions like the Media Research Center, created by homophobe L. Brent Bozell III, have hammered at this message for decades.
The so-called “liberal media” is often a convenient scapegoat to explain away conservative failures and shortcomings. When Republicans have lost elections or when the public sides with the left on any number of issues—LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, climate change—they blame “liberal media.” Conservatism can never fail if “liberal media” is poisoning people’s minds with propaganda, the right contends.
Trump has taken this hostility to a new level, frequently arguing over the years that broadcast licenses should be pulled in response to liberal bias. Trump has said on multiple occasions that media outlets that deviate from the right should simply cease to exist.
Trump even recently filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer, simply because she incorrectly forecasted vote totals in Iowa leaning toward Harris.
But overwhelming evidence shows that corporate media has actually been overly friendly and open to Republicans and conservatives. Leading outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, and CNN frequently bend over backward to elevate conservative rhetoric and falsehoods—even when those lies have been thoroughly debunked.
Few have benefited from this approach more than Trump, whose coverage in corporate media rarely shows an unsanitized version of his rambling, incoherence, and bigotry. Instead, his comments are “sanewashed” and presented as if they are within the accepted norms across the aisle—even when he talks about an asylum from “Silence of the Lambs” as if it’s real.
Trump’s extremist solution to the “60 Minutes” episode reflects what the right truly wants from the media: To simply regurgitate right-wing talking points and to hail all Republicans as heroes who are always in the right.
The GOP wants journalism to become indistinguishable from a Republican National Committee press release, and it will deny reality—even when it’s documented in a video—in pursuit of this goal.
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