By Dave Andrusko

Back on October 9, I wrote about the awfully suspicious October 7 CBS interview with pro-abortion Vice President Kamala Harris. Granted, compared to the “we’re all friends here” treatment Harris received on The View, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Howard Stern on Sirius XM, her interview on 60 Minutes must have seemed like torture. And to be sure, anything would have seemed like a grilling compared to sharing a beer with Stephen Colbert.

But, as I wrote back then, “Before we hail Bill Whitaker as an incarnation of attorney F. Lee Bailey, we ought to see how– even though he got some telling responses from Harris– Whitaker and CBS made sure she didn’t come off as bad as she could have.”

The issue then and the issue now is how CBS edited the interview.

Fox News’s Brian Flood and David Rutz published a searing indictment of CBS.

“CBS aired two different answers to the same question in its ’60 Minutes’ interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, replacing a clip from the Democratic nominee that aired on [CBS News’s]“Face the Nation” Sunday when the interview package aired in a primetime special on Monday.”

Referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the answer Harris gave to Face the Nation was much more concise [even if it made little sense] than the one she gave to 60 Minutes.

What to do? Simple. Since the interview was taped, all CBS need to do was plop in her answer to Face the Nation and pretend that was her response to 60 Minutes.

Of course, the Trump campaign was incensed. They called for CBS to release the full interview unedited. To this day, CBS has refused their request, leading to the only conclusion an adult could reach: CBS made her sound far more coherent than she was actually was to aid her campaign.

“Bear in mind that CBS and 60 Minutes thought that first answer was newsworthy enough to include in its advertising,” Ed Morrissey wrote for HotAir. “However, it created all sorts of ridicule over Harris’ lack of substance in the answer, along with her tremulous voice at the start of the response.”

While still standing firm on the transcript, on October 20, CBS issued a self-congratulatory statement, denying any bias or failure to follow journalistic ethics. Here’s the key section:

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.

 

Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated.

So (A) by whittling down Harris statement it made time for “other subjects,” and (B) Trump bailed while Harris didn’t, CBS interview was “clear, accurate and on point.”

Talk about patting yourself on the back.

Morrissey was much more honest:

So … Trump refused to do an interview, and 60 Minutes got revenge by editing his opponent’s responses to make her sound (marginally) smarter? Is that how journalism works? Because that’s how this reads. …

 

With 60 Minutes now acknowledging that they change answers on recorded interviews to suit their own motives, the last part of the statement is a hilarious exercise in total non-self-awareness.

An angry Trump responded on his Truth Social feed:

“Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, to make her look better.”

So why did Trump refused to appear on 60 Minutes? Because Leslie Stahl, that paragon of objectivity, had previously interrogated Trump using false information. And, of course, she never apologized.

Morrissey’s conclusion tells you all you need to know how far CBS’s news department has fallen:

Finally, the refusal to release the transcript of the full   and unedited interview looms large over this response from CBS News and 60 Minutes. Even if one buys the notion that they swapped Harris’ answer out in the interest of time, why not release the full and unedited remarks in text form? There’s no issue with air time or the need to be “succinct.” That would allow people to read Harris’ full responses for themselves to judge whether 60 Minutes edited the interview fairly.

 

Which is why we will never see the transcript, at least not under current ownership. Until we do, CBS and 60 Minutes has no credibility whatsoever, and should be considered an arm of the Democrat Party.