Mean '60 Minutes' Meanly Tells America What A Coward Donald Trump Really Is
Brutal.
This is the meanest, most cattiest “60 Minutes” intro piece in human history. No, we are not going to factcheck that statement, we are just going to say it authoritatively, like some kind of power-mad writer of dick jokes. Ha ha!
The setup is simple: there’s long been a kind of unofficial tradition in this country of presidential candidates sitting for interviews with “60 Minutes.” And this week, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were both going to go through with the ritual, at least until Trump got cold balls and dropped out, because he was scared.
So “60 Minutes” very appropriately made that into part of the story, the back-and-forth negotiations with Trump, his pathetically ever-changing excuses for why he’s too much of a coward to go on TV and answer questions.
Here’s the video, below the transcript:
Witness the brutality in its glorious entirety:
It's been a tradition for more than half a century that the major party candidates for president sit down with 60 Minutes in October. In 1968, it was Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump accepted our invitation.
But unfortunately, last week, Trump canceled.
The Trump campaign had told us that the interview would be this past Thursday at Mar-A-Lago, Trump's Florida home. They also asked us whether we would meet 78-year-old Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the Republican candidate for president was grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt. We agreed. On Sept. 9, Trump communications director Steven Cheung sent a text that read: "I'm working with our advance team to see logistically if Butler would work in addition to the sit down." Sit-down meaning the interview in Florida.
Days later, Cheung called to say "the president said yes."
[Donald Trump is not the president. - Ed.]
Then, a week ago, Trump backed out. The campaign offered shifting explanations. First, it complained that we would fact check the interview.
We factcheck every story.
[Cheung had loser-whined on Twitter that it was “unprecedented” for “60 Minutes” to do live factchecking. - Ed.]
Later, Trump said he needed an apology for his interview in 2020. Trump claims correspondent Lesley Stahl said, in that interview, that Hunter Biden's controversial laptop came from Russia. She never said that.
[In the official transcript, “60 Minutes” provides this quote of Trump bitching about the show being so mean to him in 2020, by calling Hunter Biden’s laptop Russian: "Where's my apology? They should apologize," Trump said on Tuesday night at a Milwaukee press conference. "They were wrong on everything. So I'd like to get an apology. So I've asked them for an apology."]
Trump has said his opponent doesn't do interviews because she can't handle them. He had previously declined another debate with Harris. So tonight may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and election day. Our questions addressed the economy, immigration, reproductive rights and the wars in the Middle East and Europe. Both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out.
And so with that, here’s Bill Whitaker.
“60 Minutes” added Kamala Harris’s response to Trump backing out like a coward, which she gave during her interview, which she apparently was able to handle after all: "If he is not going to give your viewers the ability to have a meaningful, thoughtful conversation, question and answer with you, then watch his rallies. You're going to hear conversations that are about himself and all of his personal grievances."
She’s always telling people to check out his rallies, to see what he’s really like. Maybe she also doesn’t like the way the media constantly sanewashes him.
As Lawrence O’Donnell suggested on MSNBC last night, maybe Trump’s brain is just too far decomposed for his people to trust him to sit for an interview with a real journalist. Maybe his handlers are scared of having him do an interview for another reason. Maybe he’s just personally terrified of “60 Minutes,” the same way he’s terrified of shark, battery, and stairs.
By the way, here’s the transcript for the interview Harris did with “60 Minutes” personality Bill Whitaker. A lot of people are saying his questions were total shit, that he seemingly worked so hard to launder Republican talking points and make Harris deny them, it’s almost like Trump was there after all.
Example: “With so many people supporting Donald Trump, a man you have called a racist. How do you bridge that seemingly unbridgeable gap?”
You know, because it’s her job to bridge the gap of Trump’s racism.
But hey, at least she sat for the interview, because she’s not fucking chickenshit.
[CBS News]
Evan has a new side project called The Moral High Ground, you should check it out and subscribe there too!
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
If you're shopping on Amazon anyway, this portal gives us a small commission.
Bill Whittaker's weird, confrontational move on VP Harris in which he demanded to know why she'd called Donald a racist, and was she calling the "millions of Americans" who support him racists, was an attempt by CBS to revive the "basket of deplorables" frenzy of 2016, that the Beltway press used to damage Hillary horrendously (she had had the nerve to suggest that the core of Ku Kluxers and Nazis who vote Republican were a problem for the party).
From the transcript:
𝐁𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫: 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐇𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝, 𝐎𝐡𝐢𝐨, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞. 𝐈𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞. 𝐘𝐞𝐭 𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐬. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭?
Why does *she* have to explain that? Or anything about Pabs?