The unedited transcript of CBS News’ "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t show that the news outlet replaced Harris’ answers to questions about U.S.-Israel relations with responses from a different part of the interview.
CBS News used a longer version of Harris’ answer in a video clip preview on the CBS News show "Face the Nation." It used a shorter excerpt in the "60 Minutes" interview that aired Oct. 7, 2024. Both versions come from the same three-and-a-half-minute exchange on U.S.-Israel relations.
It’s standard practice for news outlets to edit interviews for length and clarity.
By Sara Swann
President Donald Trump’s monthslong feud with CBS News’ "60 Minutes" reignited after the news program released the full, unedited transcript and video of its pre-election interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.
About three weeks after the Oct. 7, 2024, interview aired, Trump sued CBS Broadcasting Inc. and CBS Interactive Inc. for $10 billion, claiming the news outlet deceptively edited the "60 Minutes" interview to favor Harris. Then, at the end of January, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, called on CBS to release the unedited transcript and video. CBS News complied, releasing the content publicly Feb. 5.
In response, Trump posted Feb. 6 on his social media platform Truth Social that CBS committed "fraud."
"CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before," Trump wrote. "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."
Trump claimed ‘60 Minutes’ replaced Harris’ interview answers. That’s not what the transcript shows.
If Your Time is short
The unedited transcript of CBS News’ "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t show that the news outlet replaced Harris’ answers to questions about U.S.-Israel relations with responses from a different part of the interview.
CBS News used a longer version of Harris’ answer in a video clip preview on the CBS News show "Face the Nation." It used a shorter excerpt in the "60 Minutes" interview that aired Oct. 7, 2024. Both versions come from the same three-and-a-half-minute exchange on U.S.-Israel relations.
It’s standard practice for news outlets to edit interviews for length and clarity.
See the sources for this fact-check
President Donald Trump’s monthslong feud with CBS News’ "60 Minutes" reignited after the news program released the full, unedited transcript and video of its pre-election interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.
About three weeks after the Oct. 7, 2024, interview aired, Trump sued CBS Broadcasting Inc. and CBS Interactive Inc. for $10 billion, claiming the news outlet deceptively edited the "60 Minutes" interview to favor Harris. Then, at the end of January, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, called on CBS to release the unedited transcript and video. CBS News complied, releasing the content publicly Feb. 5.
In response, Trump posted Feb. 6 on his social media platform Truth Social that CBS committed "fraud."
"CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before," Trump wrote. "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."
Trump’s statement misrepresents what happened.
Trump claimed ‘60 Minutes’ replaced Harris’ interview answers. That’s not what the transcript shows.
If Your Time is short
The unedited transcript of CBS News’ "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t show that the news outlet replaced Harris’ answers to questions about U.S.-Israel relations with responses from a different part of the interview.
CBS News used a longer version of Harris’ answer in a video clip preview on the CBS News show "Face the Nation." It used a shorter excerpt in the "60 Minutes" interview that aired Oct. 7, 2024. Both versions come from the same three-and-a-half-minute exchange on U.S.-Israel relations.
It’s standard practice for news outlets to edit interviews for length and clarity.
See the sources for this fact-check
President Donald Trump’s monthslong feud with CBS News’ "60 Minutes" reignited after the news program released the full, unedited transcript and video of its pre-election interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.
About three weeks after the Oct. 7, 2024, interview aired, Trump sued CBS Broadcasting Inc. and CBS Interactive Inc. for $10 billion, claiming the news outlet deceptively edited the "60 Minutes" interview to favor Harris. Then, at the end of January, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, called on CBS to release the unedited transcript and video. CBS News complied, releasing the content publicly Feb. 5.
In response, Trump posted Feb. 6 on his social media platform Truth Social that CBS committed "fraud."
"CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before," Trump wrote. "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."
Trump’s statement misrepresents what happened.
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Trump is referring to Harris’ answers in two videos CBS News released. In an Oct. 6, 2024, video clip previewing the interview on the CBS News show "Face the Nation," Harris answered a question about U.S.-Israel relations. The next day, when the "60 Minutes" interview aired, it showed Harris giving a different answer to the same question.
The full, unedited interview transcript shows that CBS News’ "60 Minutes" took Harris’ answers in both videos from the same three-and-a-half-minute exchange on U.S.-Israel relations. It does not show that CBS News replaced Harris’ answers on this topic with a response from a different portion of the interview.
It’s typical for news outlets to edit long interviews into shorter broadcast segments or published stories.
Trump backed out of his CBS News "60 Minutes" interview before the 2024 election, breaking a decadeslong tradition of major party presidential candidates’ interviews with the network ahead of the general election.
PolitiFact contacted the White House for comment, but received no response.
What the full, unedited transcript shows
Because the interview aired on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker began the interview with questions about Israel and the Biden-Harris administration’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
PolitiFact annotated the unedited interview transcript below to show how "60 Minutes" presented Harris’ answers in the preview clip and aired interview.
The full, unedited interview video is available on
"60 Minutes" YouTube page. The exchange about U.S.-Israel relations starts about six minutes in.
You can also read the full, unedited interview transcript here. The exchange about U.S.-Israel relations is on Pages 11-13. Parts highlighted in yellow were included in the preview clip, parts highlighted in blue were in the aired interview and parts highlighted in green were in both videos.
Why did "60 Minutes" share different clips?
When publishing the transcripts and video the Federal Communications Commission requested, CBS News said in a statement that the content shows "the ‘60 Minutes’ broadcast was not doctored or deceitful."
In its statement, CBS News noted that it’s common practice for journalists to edit interviews for time, space or clarity. The full, unedited interview video is 57 minutes long; that was edited down to 20 minutes.
CBS News said it broadcast a longer portion of Harris’ answer to Whitaker’s question about U.S.-Israel relations in a preview clip and a shorter version of Harris’ answer was included in the aired interview.
The news outlet said it edited the "60 Minutes" interview to include as much of Harris’ answers to Whitaker’s questions as possible, while fairly representing the substance of Harris’ answers.
CBS News made a
similar statement Oct. 20, 2024, rebutting Trump’s accusation of deceitful editing.
Kelly McBride, senior vice president and chair of Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, told PolitiFact that CBS News’ "60 Minutes" edited the Harris interview reasonably. (The Poynter Institute owns PolitiFact.)
"I would say that their edits are completely within the standards that journalists employ when they try to create an informative product for the public," McBride said. "It seems very much like what journalists do with all verbose speakers, including and especially Donald Trump."
Trump posted on Truth Social that CBS News and 60 Minutes "replaced" Harris’ "60 Minutes" interview answers "with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview."
The full, unedited interview transcript does not show that CBS News’ "60 Minutes" replaced all of Harris’ answers to questions about U.S.-Israel relations with a response from a different part of the interview. CBS did not change Harris’ meaning.
News outlets commonly edit interviews for length and clarity. CBS News used a longer version of Harris’ response in a video clip previewing the "60 Minutes" interview on the CBS News show "Face the Nation." It used a shorter excerpt of Harris’ answer in the aired "60 Minutes" interview. Both parts of Harris’ answer were taken from the same segment of the interview, the unedited transcript shows.
A media ethics expert said the "60 Minutes" interview adhered to typical journalistic standards.
We rate this claim False.
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