Posted on 10/10/2024 11:36:12 AM PDT by DeweyCA
I've written about 60 Minutes' edits to the Kamala Harris interview, slicing and dicing her word salads to paste together a coherent answer. It is, in a way, exactly the opposite of what the media does to create false Donald Trump narratives like the "fine people" hoax.
More information has come out about the disastrous interview and 60 Minutes' manipulations, and of course, we should throw in CBS' lie about Leslie Stahl's Trump interview in 2020. They flat-out lied about what happened, and there is tape to prove it.
And, of course, CBS is facing fallout from its Ta-Nahise Coates interview and the Maoist struggle sessions at the network. I wrote about that yesterday, too. But let's set that one aside because that is more about woke ideology taking over the newsroom and not flat-out dishonesty.
First, let's go back to the edits CBS made--that we know of. We actually have only a tiny amount of information, and even THAT makes CBS look terrible. Here is the original clip comparison that started the controversy.
The only reason we have this much to go on is that CBS pre-released a few tidbits from the interview and then edited them down for the final broadcast. Enterprising people noticed the vast differences between the videos originally seen and those that aired and are now shared by CBS as genuine.
Laura Powell put together transcripts of the differences, and they are startling.
Let me quote her transcript and highlight what was taken out:
In addition to substituting an entirely different answer to a question,
@60Minutes edited Kamala Harris’s response to the previous question so much that it is not an accurate representation of what she said.
Here is the question and answer from the original clip, with the parts edited out before broadcast in brackets:
WHITAKER: We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris Administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire; he’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon; he went in anyway. [He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war.] Does the US have no sway over prime minister Netanyahu?
HARRIS: [The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas—Hezbollah presents—um Iran um, I think that is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now,] the work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel, is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, [which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and and create a ceasefire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region, including Arab leaders.]
WHITAKER: But it seems that prime minister Netanyahu is not listening.
HARRIS: [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.]
You immediately notice that CBS left on the cutting room floor the vast majority of what she said, the vast majority of which was nonsense. Laura lays it out concisely:
Just to make it clear, they turned this response:
“The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas—Hezbollah presents—um Iran um, I think that is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now, the work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel, is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and and create a ceasefire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region, including Arab leaders.”
Into a concise and vague statement:
“The work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel, is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.”
All that verbiage is cut and pasted into one concise sentence that makes her sound 1000% better.
That's just one exchange. God knows what else they did because they are hiding the evidence. The transcript they released was not of the whole exchange but their edited version. They are hiding the ball and have clammed up about it.
The Harris/Walz campaign could have been in the editing room, and for all we know, they were. Not that it would matter because CBS took a pretty decent interview from Whitaker and turned it into something else to help her.
Stephen Miller did an excellent podcast on the topic. He points out something I hadn't noticed: CBS cut out Harris' most pro-Israel comments. This fits nicely with the Coates controversy. Tony Dokoupil challenged Coates on his anti-Israel screed and was forced to apologize to the newsroom for asking questions. In both instances the issue was Israel, and in both cases CBS was deprecating any defense of Israel.
Now consider the Trump controversy.
Donald Trump was willing to sit down with an interview with 60 Minutes but rightly demanded an apology for Leslie Stahl's claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was discredited--a fake. We all know that is completely false, and it is now evidence in Hunter's legal troubles. The FBI had verified it in 2019 and hid it, and the intelligence community lied about it, but it had been verified and fair game. Stahl lied to cover it up.
CBS has the tape from the interview, so they know they are lying in this clip.
Glenn Kessler, the "fact checker," claims that Trump is wrong to criticize CBS and 60 Minutes, posting transcripts. Except if you read the transcript themselves you see he is pulling a 60 Minutes here--slicing and dicing to create a false impression.
In his own post, he shows that Stahl said the laptop was "investigated and discredited." Both of those statements are false and used to dismiss a true story that may have changed the outcome of the election.
We now know that the laptop was real, the shady deals in China and Ukraine are real, and that millions of dollars have been spread around from foreign countries to Biden family members, yet CBS claims it is TRUMP who is lying about what we can see and read.
60 Minutes has, unfortunately, a lot of credibility with an important group of voters, including a lot of swing voters. In this one episode, they manipulated the Harris interview to make her look coherent and falsely claimed that Trump was wrong about something that is indisputably true. They defended their own lies and called him a liar.
Some commenters say that nobody trusts the MSM anymore, but that isn't true. Their influence is vastly diminished, but a lot of low- to mid-information voters still trust brands like 60 Minutes.
Who knows if 60 Minutes will break its silence on these scandals or whether anyone else in the MSM will call them on it? I tend to doubt it. Instead, you will get a circling of the wagons because, well, they are propagandists.
I’d like to see the FCC take their license away. We need bold action. “Outrage” doesn’t get us anywhere.
But that's too cruel to the horses. Maybe they should wake up with Nina Totenberg's or Lesley Stahl's head in their beds instead.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
60 Minutes is a major part of the News Organization of CBS, which has just created the Greatest Fraud in Broadcast History. CBS should lose its license, and it should be bid out to the Highest Bidder, as should all other Broadcast Licenses, because they are just as corrupt as CBS — and maybe even WORSE!
60 minutes has been selectively editing and manufacturing evidence since it’s inception... They have and always will be left leaning Democrat shills.
Didn’t CBS 60 min voice over an answer for kamaLOL?
(I skimmed the story)
That is a legal avenue since CBS is not fulfilling the objective of its FCC license, namely informing the viewing public. However, I’m sure the FCC is also in bed with the Administration, as is DOJ, so that’s not going anywhere until Trump wins and starts cleaning house.
Yep, they lied about that, so screw them.
Harris’s 60 Minutes “save my campaign” interview was incoherent, with her usual rambling word salads.
<><>she has avoided the national press and conducted zero press conferences.
<><>political pundits mercilessly mocked her
<><>Billy Binion, a Reason reporter, slammed her as “economically illiterate”
<><>Tim Young ripped her as the “dumbest candidate ever”
<><>one of the first times she sat down for a serious, unscripted interview,
<><>the 60 Minutes host asked honest questions
<><>how would she pay for her increased spending?
<><>she dumbly argued “billionaires” will pay for it.
THAT was the most epic beauty-contest answer EVAH!
Harris’ acceptance speech to the 2024 Democratic National Convention drew one of her most thunderous applause lines when she called for an end to the violence and suffering Israel is inflicting in Gaza and for the long-denied fulfillment of Palestinian rights to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.
This enthusiastic reception by tens of thousands of die-hard Democrats at the convention, was a faithful reflection of where the base of the party stands on Palestinian-Israeli issues.
And now we hear that drjill Biden has been pressuring her husband on Israel’s war on Hamas, saying. “Stop it. Stop it now, Joe.” At a Ramadan event at the White House, Joe Biden reportedly told attendees about “Jill’s sophisticated geopolitical advice.”
Dan Rather.
60 minutes has been doing this for years. I remember some company they were doing a piece on but I can’t recall which company it was. The company suspected a hit piece so they filmed all the interviews themselves along with 60 minutes. When the piece aired, at one point a voice over says “when we asked the spokesman blah, blah, blah, he said” and then they showed the answer the spokesman gave, which made the company look really bad. The company released the actual footage and it revealed the spokesman was answering a completely different question than what voice over had said. And the answer to the actual question was totally reasonable.
They have been pulling that crap for many, many decades. “60 Minutes of Communist Propaganda” is the correct name.
I’m not a saint, but I honestly try to do my best to be an honest and upright person. I simply cannot imagine what it’s like to be as utterly lacking in integrity as these people are
There are never consequences.
“60 minutes has been doing this for years ... so they filmed all the interviews themselves along with 60 minutes.”
I’m surprised that the interviewees are allowed to do their own filming of an episode. I also don’t understand how the unedited interview became public.
Perhaps CBS always makes unedited interview transcripts or film publicly available.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.