Eddie Scarry of the Federalist reacts to the release of an unedited CBS interview with Kamala Harris that took place during the presidential campaign.
It’s been three months since the election, and there are still so many unanswered questions as to what exactly happened in the very obvious partnership that took place between the dying national news media and the Kamala Harris campaign. But a little more clarity was offered this week when Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, released the full nearly hour-long interview CBS “60 Minutes” aired with Harris several weeks before Election Day.
The disclosure of the raw footage came as CBS cooperated with a complaint to the FCC from the Center for American Rights, a right-leaning law firm that accused the network of news distortion. The allegation followed a discrepancy observers noted between the short tease that CBS released in advance of the full “60 Minutes” episode and the final cut that aired and showed Harris offering a different answer to the same question.
What we know now is that CBS’s original explanation for the issue, that it merely used a separate portion of a longer answer in the production that went to air, is true. But that doesn’t clear the network of its questionable decision to clean up not only that newsworthy portion of the interview, in which Harris’s fuller answer is hysterically confused, but in other parts, too.
Another highly suspect omission from the final cut was an extended portion in which Harris wasn’t asked some convoluted question on geopolitical matters or macro economics, but on why she wants to be president. “There are many reasons but probably, um, first and foremost, I truly believe in the promise of America,” she droned in an alarmingly slow cadence. “I do. And I love the American people. You know, we are a people who have ambition and aspirations and dreams and optimism and hope.”
Without even being able to see interviewer Bill Whitaker, you can feel his eyes mentally rolling to the back of his skull. The portion was surely nixed for its banality, but it’s a fundamental question the average voter would want an answer to, regardless of whether Harris has a deeply superficial, deeply boring answer.
