NEW YORK — CBS News said the Trump campaign offered “shifting explanations” for why it backed out of a “60 Minutes” interview special with presidential candidates that aired without him.
The network’s Scott Pelley appeared on the air Monday night to explain why Republican Donald Trump did not appear on what has become a “60 Minutes” tradition: back-to-back interviews with presidential candidates in the last month of the campaign.
Harris was on the show, interviewed by Bill Whitaker. Where Trump was supposed to appear, “60 Minutes” instead aired a story about an Arizona official pushing false claims about election fraud.
Pelley said that the Trump campaign “complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story.”
The Trump team also demanded an apology for his interview during the 2020 campaign, where he claimed that correspondent Lesley Stahl said a laptop computer belonging to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter came from Russia. “She never said that,” Pelley said.
Pelley said that Trump’s team had agreed to an interview at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home, with an additional talk in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he returned to the scene of a July assassination attempt.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said “60 Minutes” “begged for an interview.” The campaign did have concerns about the show’s reporting on Hunter Biden and how it insisted upon editing Trump’s comments, he said.
“There was nothing scheduled or agreed upon,” Cheung said. ”We had already long promised an exclusive in filming at Butler to another national outlet, which turned out the be Fox News.”
Trump’s interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham aired an hour before “60 Minutes” on Monday night. His absence from CBS was not mentioned in their exchange. Trump apparently, watched, however, posting on Truth Social that the Harris interview “is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST interview they have ever seen.”
Pelley poked at Trump, noting he had already turned down another opportunity to debate Harris, along with the “60 Minutes” interview, “which may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and election day.”
Moving “60 Minutes” out of its traditional Sunday time slot may have depressed the audience size, however. An estimated 5.4 million people watched on Monday, according to preliminary Nielsen company figures, compared with the 9.6 million who saw the newsmagazine on Sunday, Sept. 29.
No estimate for Trump’s audience on Ingraham’s show was immediately available. Her show averaged 2.7 million viewers a night last week, Nielsen said.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
