CBS responds to Trump and rejects his legal threat by relying on the First Amendment
The Republican candidate had requested through a statement that the network publish Kamala Harris' full "60 Minutes" interview.
Trump headlined a panel with Hispanic leaders in Florida/ Chandan Khanna
CBS responded to Donald Trump over the legal threat to have Kamala Harris's full interview with "60 Minutes" released. The network sent the Republican's lawyers a letter asserting that their client is relying on a "flawed premise," also adding that the First Amendment "fiercely protects" their actions with the Democrat's interview.
According to CBS News, Gayle C. Sproul, Trump would have "no legal basis to sue" the network. "Nor is there any legal basis for your demand that we provide you with the unedited transcript of the interview, which we decline to do," she added in the message.
Sproul was responding to a previous letter sent to the network by Edward Andrew Paltzik, an attorney representing Trump, who alleged that they had "intentionally misled the public by broadcasting a skillfully edited interview" aimed at "causing confusion among the electorate regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s abilities, intelligence, and appeal."
"We therefore demand that you immediately provide and release the full, unedited transcript and preserve all communications and documents," the counsel added at the time.
Once Harris' interview with journalist Bill Whitaker was released, viewers noted that CBS had aired two different answers from Harris to a question about why Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly "doesn't listen" to the United States.
According to the network, far from editing the response to help Harris, they simply cut the response and split it into two separate days.
Indeed, Sproul's response asserts that Paltzik's letter was "based on the faulty premise that ’60 Minutes' distorted its interview" with Harris "to present it in a positive light."
She also added that Harris' interview "was not doctored" and that the network "did not withhold any part of the vice president's answer to the question in question."
"Editing is a necessity for all broadcasters to enable them to present the news in the time available, and that is what ’60 Minutes’ did here, as it does with its other reports," Sproul stated in the letter sent to Trump's lawyers.
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