Donald Trump Declined ’60 Minutes’ Appearance Because ‘We Would Fact-Check The Interview,’ CBS Says

Source: Kevin Dietsch / Getty

Who would have thought that, in a shocking turn of events, Donald Trump’s kryptonite would turn out to be fact-checking?

Fact check: Everybody knew. Nobody outside of the MAGA world is surprised that the commander-in-losing-and-lying-and-lying-about-losing buckles under the pressure of fact-checkers. Also, Trump is not Superman. He’s not even Bizarro Superman. Trump is a Joker/ Penguin/ Gargamel/ Dr. Evil hybrid whose other weaknesses include syntax structure, thoughts and sentences that go together, wide shots of his crowd sizes, non-stick toupees, and 50-mile radiuses where there are no tanning beds.

According to CBS News officials, Trump’s reason for backing out of a 60 Minutes interview special with presidential candidates was simple: He didn’t want his lies pointed out. (To be fair, calling out all of Trump’s lies would mean changing the program’s name from 60 Minutes to How Much Time You Got?)

From the Associated Press:

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.

Trump and Harris debate, Sept. 2024 Source: The Washington Post / Getty

Viewed through the cloudy, scratched up trump lens

So, just to recap: Trump wouldn’t go on the program because he’s as afraid of fact-checkers as he is of protesters when there’s no bunker for him to hide in. 60 Minutes replaced Trump with some random Diet Trump from Arizona, because, hey, somebody has to lie about election fraud. VP Kamala Harris, the presidential candidate who doesn’t ever seem to be worried about fact-checkers, did appear on the program. And also: Trump demanding an apology for a thing that is recorded as never happening? I’ll just leave that right there.

Of course, the Republican candidate’s campaign had a different explanation about why he declined.

More from AP:

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…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.

Roland Martin joins a stunned audience listening to Trump’s racism at this year’s NABJ Source: Jason Armond / Getty.

Nothing ever new under the burnt-out Trump sun

Do you notice how every excuse made for Trump is always conveniently flattering toward the ex-president? CBS “begged for an interview,” huh? Yes, I’m sure the executives got on their knees and pleaded with him to come on their little program and ramble incoherently and berate the host for practicing honest journalism by asking him direct questions about the lies he’s told, the hate speech he’s spewed and the white nationalists he’s either sang the praises of or broken bread with.

Look, we’ve seen all of this before. When Trump made his disastrous appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in August — the interview where he raged at panelist Rachel Scott for asking him about his racism just moments before he made unprompted racist remarks about Harris’ racial identity — he blamed NABJ’s “bad equipment” for why his interview started nearly two hours late. However, NABJ curators and numerous journalists in attendance reported that Trump was late because he was demanding that NABJ not follow through with its plan to do live fact-checking during the appearance. 

Trump can only thrive in spaces where he can lie unencumbered, which is likely why he preferred to interview on Fox News — the network he knows will enable him and his propensity for spreading easily debunked propaganda while shouting “fake news” at every other media that won’t enable him.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

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Jack Smith’s 165-Page Legal Brief Detailing Trump’s 2020 Election Fraud Propaganda Unsealed

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