Precisely What Edit in the '60 Minutes' Interview Is the President Freaking Out About?

There has been an enormous amount of attention paid to a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election, in which the now-sitting President claims that “election-changing” edits were made. The FCC, under its new leader Brendan Carr, has opened an investigation. A transcript has been published.

Here is the relevant part of the interview — the edit that has created all the controversy.

Edited: “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.”

Original: “Well, Bill, 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. And we’re 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.”

That’s it. That’s the controversial edit. 60 Minutes removed some filler — a meaningless sentence that did not change the substance of what aired whatsoever. They edited out a meandering preface: “Well, Bill, 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.”

And yet, the President — even today, even knowing exactly what was edited — has continued to call for CBS to lose its license, condemning the removal of that one sentence as the “biggest broadcasting SCANDAL in history.”

“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,” he wrote on Truth Social.

There is no controversy. There is nothing to see here. It is all manufactured outrage designed to damage the already damaged credibility of the media, and the President doubled down when it was clear that the substance had not been affected.

I’ve read a dozen articles recounting exactly what I’ve recounted here, but not one of them has said that the President is completely full of sh*t and that there is nothing wrong with the edit because it does not change the substance of the answer. If the media would like to regain a modicum of its credibility, it might do well to highlight why the President is wrong instead of merely amplifying his lies against the media.

I should also note that the President has brought suit against 60 Minutes over this edit. It is a bullshit lawsuit. No one believes he will win on the merits. Nevertheless, Shari Redstone, who currently controls CBS, is likely to settle the lawsuit for several million dollars (paid to the President’s library fund) to help grease the wheels for the sale of Paramount to Skydance. As a result, even though the suit is clearly meritless, many will assume that CBS must have done something wrong—otherwise, why would they settle?

It’s maddening. It’s a gross abuse of the President’s power, but it’s also a prime example of how media consolidation weakens independent journalism.