If you watched or listened to Tuesday’s episode of The Megyn Kelly Show (episode 910), you know we went through Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview in great detail. As it turns out, we should have been even more attentive to what the program had done to that sit-down.
The Edit
It was very obviously edited in many places, but we didn’t quite put together that they had gone back and edited the answer they put out as a teaser on Sunday about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Here’s the full promo clip:
By the time the piece aired on Monday night, there was a pretty shocking scrubbing of a word salad response (specifically, around the 1 minute, 43 second-mark). There is an account on X, @MazeMoore, that put together the answer that CBS News posted as part of its tease next to the answer that aired in the actual 60 Minutes piece. Spot the difference:
You see what they did, don’t you? It is so nakedly partisan and desperate to save her. That first answer is just classic Kamala Harris. “The work that we have done has resulted in movements…” What? I’m already lost. Even the edited answer she gave was somewhat classic Kamala, but the first one was beyond.
What Happened
Here is what I think happened: 60 Minutes put out the short Q&A clip about whether or not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is listening to us and included at least part of her rambling answer. Because they are leftists, they don’t see her answers as word salad. They’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s our girl. Look at her. She is saying tough things.’ No one realized that this exchange was going to make her look bad. If they did, they would not have released it this way.
They dropped the clip and the internet went crazy over it because she sounds terrible. For this audience, it is the common terribleness we expect from Kamala Harris. It is the stuff you have heard from her a million times. She is so wordy that it takes her 50 words to say what could be articulated in five. It was the typical annoying Kamala Harris stuff, but it was not good.
So, by the time CBS News aired the longer-form interview on Monday night, 60 Minutes had cleaned up her answer. They pulled a much shorter and tighter – though still inane – phrase from a different part of her answer, and they sort of got rid of all the word salad in between. It was no longer a salad. They boiled it down to just one green pepper that you could understand and eat easily.
Running Cover
Make no mistake, this is CBS News running cover for Kamala Harris. I am amazed they had the guts to do it given that they had released the tease, but it was a particularly bad response. In the wake of the controversial fact-checking in the vice presidential debate and the fallout from the Tony Dokoupil-Ta-Nehisi Coates interview, the network is getting hit on this – but only by the right.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 912 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.
