CBS News releases full transcripts of Kamala Harris interview at heart of $10 billion Trump lawsuit

The spate of lawsuits Donald Trump launched against news and social media companies in the four years he was busy being convicted of felonies (in between being President) have mostly gone pretty well for him: Both Disney and Facebook have opted to settle with Trump in the months since his re-election, sending something like a collective $37 million in make-nice money to the fund for his future presidential library in exchange for some governmental belly rubs. CBS News, though, has been holding out a bit when it comes to Trump's $10 billion 60 Minutes lawsuit, despite apparent thinking from higher-ups at Paramount about how they could just throw money at the problem so that the company can have its planned big shiny merger with Skydance Media without the government getting in the way.

This week (per Deadline), CBS News released the full transcript (and video) of 60 Minutes' October 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which is the crux of Trump's lawsuit. The Trump camp claims that 60 Minutes deliberately re-cut an answer Harris gave to reporter Bill Whitaker about Israel to make her look better. (The longer version of the response ran on Face The Nation ahead of the 60 Minutes interview, so if CBS News was trying to be sneaky about the cuts, it didn't do a very good job.) At the center of the whole thing is a question Whitaker asked Harris about Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu; the transcript shows Harris giving a a three-sentence answer, while in the 60 Minutes interview, only the final sentence of the quote was used:

"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. And we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”



Now, admittedly, CBS News might only have released the transcripts themselves today because the FCC forced its hand: The Commission also released the transcripts (and the video of the interview), which it got from CBS after a bit of a back-and-forth, earlier today, while also inviting the public to weigh in on the edits through a "public docket" that we're sure is going to make for some extremely typo-free reading once it's all compiled. The FCC had previously dismissed the "news distortion" claims against 60 Minutes before the election, but obviously they got renewed again after Trump appointed Brendan Carr as the regulator's new chairman shortly after he was elected. In its statement with the transcripts, CBS News stood by its decisions, saying that, "In reporting the news, journalists regularly edit interviews – for time, space or clarity. In making these edits, 60 Minutes is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public – all while working within the constraints of broadcast television."