While the Kamala Harris/60 Minutes interview story smolders on, the public is focused on CBS's deceptive editing, and not what Harris said...nor are they decrying American troops in Israel.
As we reported on October 8th, there is more to the interview story than CBS cleaning up Kamala's awful syntax. In the unedited version of the 60 Minutes interview, Bill Whitaker said that Netanyahu was more or less ignoring Harris. Her reply was revealing, if one takes a moment to parse her words.
Editing out unnecessary bits, here's the distillate of what she said:
"...the work...we have done...resulted in a number of movements in that region...that were...a result of...our advocacy for what has to happen [in Israel/Palestine]."
It appears that Harris was claiming that the "work" the US has done "in the region" has caused things to change on the ground in order to push for her stated goal of a two-state solution--"what has to happen".
In the interim, the US deployed roughly 100 troops to Israel. The stated goal of the mission is to operate a THAAD anti-ballistic missile system.
The US has made no secret of its massive military funding of Israel, but boots on the ground represents a sea change. Whether those troops are there to simply shore up Israeli defenses, or to further influence "what has to happen" is anyone's guess.
What isn't up for debate: the US is now more visibly and symbolically involved in a flashpoint war that was never ours to fight. Historically, when the US commits troops, escalation is more likely than reduction or withdrawal of the first group.
In the other side of this story, CBS is coming off as petulant.
The "Eye Network" still hasn't blinked, preferring to slow roll the controversy of its deceptive editing rather than simply releasing the full transcript of the Harris interview. It's a bad look, and it has fueled more online rancor over what would have been a forgotten story by now.
A statement 60 Minutes published 15 hours ago can be boiled down to the following: Nuh-uh! We edited it to be shorter. Orange man bad.
Here it is in full:
But Trump is correct: CBS's assertions are plainly false. Yes, it's the same question, but not the same answer. When watched side by side, Harris' information about "work" causing "movements" in the region is gone, and her closing line is different, taken from an answer to a follow-up question.
Of note: 60 Minutes absolutely buried their weak rebuttal on their X timeline, posting 45 tweets in the 15 hours following the post, whereas they posted a mere five tweets in the 15 hours prior.
Decorated investigative journalist Catherine Herridge is famously involved in a federal court fight to protect her sources in a 2017 story involving a Chinese-American scientist accused by the FBI of stealing secrets about US dams and waterways.
Her comments about the Harris interview carry a lot of weight, given that she worked for CBS when they fired her and confiscated her reporting files in February.
Herridge offers several examples of CBS releasing full transcripts of interviews, including those with Bill Barr (2019), President Trump (2020), and Fed Chair Jerome Powell (2024).
CBS and 60 Minutes have failed to make this story go away, and many questions still remain. Why did the FBI suddenly drop charges against the Chinese-American scientist? Why not just release the full transcript?
Lastly, why was the current administration hellbent on obtaining Herridge's sources? Herridge seems to offer an answer in a June op-ed for the Free Press:
"After locking me out of the building, CBS seized hundreds of pages of my reporting files, including confidential source information. At that time, my primary assignment was the Hunter Biden investigation as well as Special Counsel Robert Hur’s probe of President Biden. A number of my sources told me they feared that by helping me uncover government corruption, they were now going to be exposed."
After a protracted legal battle with CBS, the files were eventually returned to Herridge. Who saw them in the interim is anyone's guess, but given the cozy relationship between Democrats, mass media, and US intelligence, the optics are ugly.
