Pressure is mounting on Vice President Kamala Harris following her 60 Minutes interview with CBS News after a poll found the vast majority of voters wanted the transcript released.
Harris sat down with veteran correspondent Bill Whitaker for a wide-ranging interview that aired October 7, touching on global politics, the economy, Harris’ presidential campaign, her position on prominent issues, and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. The interview was edited, containing several cuts.
Following the interview, Trump’s campaign called for the full transcript be released, saying that the broadcast was “deceptively edited.”
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the New York Post: “On Sunday, 60 Minutes teased Kamala’s highly-anticipated sit-down interview with this epic word salad that received significant criticism on social media.”
Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena on October 14, 2024 in Erie, Pennsylvania. A survey conducted by The Harris Poll/HarrisX between October 11-13 found that most voters believe the full transcript of Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview should be released.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
“During the full interview on Monday evening, the word salad was deceptively edited to lessen Kamala’s idiotic response. Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air?”
The Post said Leavitt was referencing a response in the aired version of the show to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which differed from an earlier promotional clip shared by 60 Minutes.
“The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it. What do they, and Kamala, have to hide?” Leavitt added.
Trump himself has criticized the interview on more than one occasion. On Tuesday the former president wrote on Truth Social that he had “never seen a very poor answer being REPLACED by another, totally unrelated answer, in order to save the person great personal and professional embarrassment.” It was unclear which segment of the interview Trump was referencing.
Newsweek contacted CBS and 60 Minutes for comment.
A survey conducted by the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll between October 11-13 found that 85 percent of all voters are keen to see the transcript.
Eighty-seven percent of Democratic voters thought the transcript should be released by CBS, as did 88 percent of Republican voters, and 80 percent of independent voters.
Furthermore, a slight majority (53 percent) said they thought the interview was edited to make the vice president “look better” – though this was mostly split along party lines, with 73 percent of Democratic voters saying it was fairly and objectively edited versus 19 percent of Republicans who said the same.
The poll also examined whether respondents thought Harris’ recent media interviews on 60 Minutes, The Howard Stern Show and the Call Her Daddy podcast “helped” or “hurt” her campaign.
Again, respondents broadly answered along party lines, with 86 percent of Democratic Party voters saying they helped, and 81 percent of Republican Party voters saying they hurt Harris.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign for comment via email outside of standard working hours.
The poll was conducted among 3,145 registered voters. As part of the sample, 2,596 likely voters and 898 battleground state voters were also interviewed. The margin of error for the total sample was +/- 1.8 pts on a 95 percent confidence level, and results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, education, political party, and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population.
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