60 Minutes Epically Drags Trump for Chickening Out of Interview
CBS’s 60 Minutes brutally roasted Donald Trump over his baseless excuses for not appearing on the show.
The Monday episode, which included an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, began with an explanation from host Scott Pelley about exactly why viewers wouldn’t be hearing from the Republican presidential nominee for the first time in more than 50 years.
“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,” Pelley said.
Pelley explained that the Trump campaign had requested that the 60 Minutes team meet the former president for a sit-down interview in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, as well as a meeting in Butler, Pennsylvania, to which they had agreed.
But on September 9, they received word from Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung that the campaign was still working on the logistics for interviewers to come to Butler. Days later, Cheung called to say the president had confirmed the plan.
“Then, a week ago, Trump backed out,” Pelley said.
“The campaign offered shifting explanations,” Pelley explained. “First it complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story.”
“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,” Pelley said. “She never said that.”
“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.”
Pelley noted that “both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out,” before transitioning into the interview.
Holy sh*t. Never seen an opening to a 60 Minutes as brutal as this one. They start by exposing all the “shifting explanations” from the Trump campaign, including not wanting 60 Minutes to “fact-check” and demanding an “apology” for Trump’s 2020 interview. Watch for yourself. pic.twitter.com/z25zNE2htY
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) October 8, 2024
During a rambling speech on Sunday, Trump claimed he’d ended the 2020 interview after Stahl incorrectly fact-checked him about Hunter Biden’s laptop. In reality, he had thrown a fit about how inappropriate it was to be asked “tough questions” before storming off.
“Ah, it’s terrible. So we’re waiting for an apology, they want to do it again,” Trump said Sunday.
“I’ll do it again, but they gotta apol—don’t you think I should make them apologize?”
In the latest 60 Minutes episode, Pelley demonstrates the power of a good fact-check. Trump’s words, and those of his campaign, don’t match up to reality—exposing his unwillingness to face it.
In a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump ranted about Harris’s interview. “The Interview on 60 Minutes with Comrade Kamala Harris is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST Interview they have ever seen,” Trump wrote, before incoherently rambling about the negative “reviews” of the federal response to Hurricane Helene.