Donald Trump is escalating his battle against CBS over his ’60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris, and his lawyer sent a letter demanding that the network release a transcript of his interview with his rival.
Days after the interview aired, Trump accuses the show of “manipulating” the interview to eliminate a word salad response about Israel.
Now Trump, who has a long history of filing lawsuits against media organizations (a judge earlier this year ordered him to pay $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times), is now raising questions about the printed transcript the network released.
“News organizations like CBS have a responsibility to accurately represent the truth of events, not to distort an interview to try to make their preferred candidate appear coherent and decisive, which Harris certainly is not,” wrote Trump lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik.
“Due to CBS’s actions, the public cannot tell which Kamala Harris they are seeing: the candidate or a behind-the-scenes editor’s puppet,” he wrote, using a term that Trump loyalists sometimes apply to Harris.
The letter accuses the network of engaging in “news distortion” and its producers of having “intentionally misled the public by airing a skillfully edited transcript of the interview, while choosing to post other portions online.”
It hints at possible legal action by saying, “Please confirm receipt of this letter within 48 hours and further confirm your intention to cooperate with these lawsuits.”
He writes that it was intended to “cause confusion among the electorate regarding the skills, intelligence and attractiveness of Vice President Kamala Harris.”
That echoes another of Trump’s attacks. He called Harris a “stupid person” on Monday.
Trump posted the letter on his Truth Social account to raise the temperature. And he barked at a local CBS reporter during her visit to a McDonald’s in suburban Philadelphia when she identified herself as an employee.
That came on a day when he attacked the ‘fake news’ media in a parallel commentary from the McDonald’s drive-thru window. He also lashed out at media outlets that talk about “fake news” on Monday and demanded that journalists interview Kamala Harris’ 86-year-old father.
Over the weekend, the network responded to claims that the show was “deceptively edited.”
It came after the network first aired a long, rambling statement from Harris on CBS Face the Nation last Sunday. But she gave a more concise answer the next night on a prime-time special.
Kamala Harris offers a long, winding response in a CBS interview that was replaced by a more concise one in the segment that aired on 60 Minutes.
Trump accused the station of fraud and said he should take it off the air, despite the obvious First Amendment problems such a move would entail.
‘Former President Donald Trump accuses 60 Minutes of misleading editing of our October 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. “That’s false,” CBS said Sunday.
CBS explained that the interview had to be condensed to fit into a 21-minute program and that it was standard procedure to trim long answers to cover more topics.
“60 Minutes provided an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of their response than 60 Minutes did,” the network said in its statement.
‘Same question. Same answer. But a different part of the answer. When we edit any interview, whether it’s a politician, athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, precise, and precise.
“The 60 Minutes portion of his response was more concise, leaving time for other topics in a lengthy 21-minute segment.”
The network also noted that Trump ‘withdrew from his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated.’
Trump did not appear after demanding an apology for his controversial 2020 interview with Leslie Stahl.
