Before canceling his appearance on “60 Minutes” last week, former President Donald Trump demanded an apology from the show, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley revealed on Monday.
“It’s been a tradition for more than half a century that the major candidates for president sit down with '60 Minutes' in October,” Pelley said. “In 1968, it was Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump accepted our invitation.”
When CBS first announced that Trump was backing out of the interview on Oct. 1 was, his campaign director Steven Cheung responded with a lie, according to the network, falsely claiming that Trump had never agreed to do the interview in the first place.
“There were initial discussions, but nothing was ever scheduled or locked in,” Cheung wrote on X.
But Pelley, detailing CBS's correspondence with the Trump campaign, said the sit-down interview was originally supposed to be held at Trump’s Mar-a-Logo residence in Florida. In addition, Trump’s campaign asked whether “60 Minutes” would meet Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the 78-year-old faced an assassination attempt at one of his rallies back in July. CBS agreed, Pelley said.
Then came the Trump campaign's efforts to back out amid growing concerns over the candidate's mental fitness for office, with Pelley describing a series of "shifting explanations" for why the Republican nominee could no longer participate.
First, Trump's campaign complained that CBS would fact-check the interview (it fact checks everyone, Pelley noted). Then Trump said he wanted an apology from the show for his 2020 interview with host Leslie Stahl, when he walked out mid-interview after getting frustrated with her questions.
Pelley’s account of the Trump campaign's backtracking came right before “60 Minutes” aired Bill Whittaker’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, who has a flurry of media appearances scheduled this week.
“So, tonight may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and election day,” Pelley said. “Our questions addressed the economy, immigration, reproductive rights, and the wars in the Middle East and Europe. Both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out.”
Whittaker grilled Harris on a number of issues including her economic plans, gun ownership and immigration. When asked about Trump’s refusal to participate, Harris said voters should instead just watch his rallies.
“You're gonna hear conversations that are about himself and all of his personal grievances,” Harris said.
