Trump Sends Formal Demand for CBS To Release Harris Interview Transcript Ahead of ‘Possible Litigation’

President Trump is ramping up pressure on CBS News to release the full transcript of Vice President Harris’s interview with “60 Minutes” after the network said it intentionally edited an answer to make it “more succinct” but denied any deception was involved.Trump’s lawyers are demanding that CBS News “immediately provide and release the full, unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview” and preserve communications and edits of the interview “in contemplation of possible litigation.” In a letter to CBS’s senior vice president of legal affairs, Gayle Sproul, an attorney for Trump, Edward Paltzik, gave the network 48 hours to respond to the demands. Mr. Paltzik wrote, “The open question is whether such posted transcript is original or whether it has also been doctored, edited, or manipulated in any way that is helpful to Kamala Harris’ failing campaign. The October 20 Statement clearly admits that edits were done in order to make Harris’ answers appear more ‘succinct.’”“CBS and its 60 Minutes producers intentionally misled the public by broadcasting a skillfully edited Interview transcript, while opting to release other portions online. Such manipulative editing was aimed at causing confusion among the electorate regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s abilities, intelligence, and appeal,” Mr. Paltzik said. “News organizations such as CBS have a responsibility to accurately represent the truth of events, not distort an interview to try and make their preferred candidate appear coherent and decisive, which Harris most certainly is not. Due to CBS’ actions, the public cannot distinguish which Kamala Harris they are seeing: the candidate or the puppet of a behind-the-scenes editor.”His letter insists “executives and producers” at the network “are unquestionably aware that the purpose behind editing the Interview was to confuse the electorate and portray the Vice President in a better light than a full, unedited transcript would reveal.”A law professor at Georgetown University, Jonathan Turley, said in a blog post about Trump’s threat to sue the network that such a case is “legally groundless” and would likely “fail.”“The media is allowed to engage in such editing. Indeed, bias itself is not generally actionable. … There were some tough moments where Whitaker pushed Harris to give more than soundbite answers,” Mr. Turley said. “The threats of harassing lawsuits destroys any moral high ground for Trump. It is also entirely unnecessary.”CBS News did not respond to a request for comment.The network has been facing increasing pressure to share the transcript since it released different versions of Ms. Harris’s interview. In a preview excerpt of the interview that aired on October 6 on “Face the Nation,” the vice president was asked why Prime Minister Netanyahu does not seem to be listening to American officials’ advice and concerns about how Israel carries out its war against Hamas.She answered with what critics called a “word salad,” saying, “The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”Yet in the primetime broadcast of “60 Minutes” that aired the following evening, when she was asked the same question about Mr. Netanyahu, the “word salad” was gone. Ms. Harris responded to the same Israel question more coherently, saying, “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”A third edit also surfaced, posted by the “Face the Nation” account on X, which included yet another answer from Ms. Harris, with a portion that did not air on TV. In the third version, the vice president spoke about America’s efforts to help Israel defend itself from attacks by Iran. She said it is America’s “imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those types of attacks.”Trump has called the edits to the interview the “worst scandal” in “broadcast history.” In a Friday interview with a radio host, Dan Bongino, the former president said, “They didn’t edit. They took her entire … paragraph … and it was a long, they say, word salad.”“It was just words, rambling words, horrible. So they take it out, and they put another statement that she made two pages later, they insert it. And nobody would’ve known the difference, and they got caught,” he added. Trump said he might sue the network for “election interference” and that “60 Minutes” should be “taken off the air.”In a statement on Sunday, “60 Minutes” admitted it edited Ms. Harris’s interview to make her answer “more succinct.” However, it denied deceptively editing the interview and then took a jab at Trump for not sitting down for an interview with CBS. CBS News’s refusal to release the full interview transcript has led to it being the subject of a complaint filed with the Federal Communications Commission, which governs broadcast television. The Center for American Rights alleged in its filing with the FCC that CBS News engaged in “significant and intentional news distortion” by editing Ms. Harris’s interview.The CAR’s complaint acknowledges that this “kind of editing is normal in the context of a news magazine style show” like “60 Minutes.” However, it says, “CBS crosses a line when its production reaches the point of so transforming an interviewee’s answer that it is a fundamentally different answer.”Rather than seeking to censor CBS News or strip it of its broadcast license, CAR’s complaint asks that the FCC force it to release the transcript of its interview with Ms. Harris.The FCC commissioner, Nathan Simington, told Fox News Digital he does not think CAR’s complaint is “facially ridiculous.” Mr. Simington, a Trump appointee, also said it would not be “inappropriate for the commission to take it up,” as it has a history of acting on news distortion complaints.

Trump Sends Formal Demand for CBS To Release Harris Interview Transcript Ahead of ‘Possible Litigation’

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