Trump claimed Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview violated campaign finance law. This is False

After former President Donald Trump pulled out of an interview with “60 Minutes,” breaking a decades-long tradition of major party presidential candidates interviewing the network before the general election, he called the interview his Democratic opponent as a “giant fake news scam.”

Before the airing of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview, the show released a preview of the video clip on Oct. 6 on X. CBS News’ “Face the Nation” also shared the preview during its October 6 broadcast.

In the clip, Harris answered a question about US-Israel relations. The next day, when the entire interview was broadcast, Harris was shown giving a different answer to the same question.

“I’ve never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced ​​and diced (‘cut and pasted’) Lyin’ Kamala’s answers to questions … all in an effort, possibly illegal as part of the “News Division,” which must be licensed, to make it look “more presidential,” or at least, better,” Trump posted Oct. 9 on Truth Social.

He continued, “It may also be a significant campaign finance violation.”

PolitiFact reached out to the Trump campaign to clarify which campaign finance rule it was referring to, but spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not respond to that question. Instead, he asked CBS News to release the “full, unedited transcript” of Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview. “What do they and Kamala have to hide?” Leavitt said.

A media ethics expert told us that it is common for TV broadcasts to select parts of an interview response, but that the network should publicly clarify its actions. And campaign finance experts said Trump’s claim of a rule violation has no basis.

How different were Harris’s answers

In the preview clip and the full interview, “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker asked about the Biden-Harris administration’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Here’s the exchange from the preview clip:

Whitaker: “We provide Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris administration has pressured him to agree to a ceasefire. He has resisted .You urged him not to go. In Lebanon, however, he has promised to pay for the missile attack, and this has the potential to expand the war.

Harris: “The aid we have given to Israel enabled Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were only intended to attack Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat posed by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, I think it is certainly our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against these kinds of attacks. Now, the work we do diplomatically with Israel’s leadership is a constant quest to make clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need to end this war, the need to make an agreement that releases the hostages and creates a ceasefire in the region, including the Arab leaders.”

Whitaker: “But Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t seem to be listening.”

Harris: “Well, Bill, the work that we’ve done has resulted in a series of moves in this region by Israel that were very much motivated by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy of what needs to happen in the region”.

Whitaker: “Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?”

Harris: “I think, with all due respect, the better question is, ‘Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people?’ And the answer to that question is, ‘Yes.'”

And here’s the exchange on the same topic that was included in the full interview:

Whitaker: “We provide Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris administration has pressured him to agree to a ceasefire. He has resisted You urged him not to go to Lebanon anyway.

Harris: “The work we do diplomatically with Israel’s leadership is a constant quest to make our principles clear.”

Whitaker: “But Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t seem to be listening.”

Harris: “We will not stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

Whitaker: “Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?”

Harris: “I think, with all due respect, the better question is, ‘Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people?’ And the answer to that question is, ‘Yes.'”

Why did “60 Minutes” share different clips?

Trump and other social media users shared a side-by-side comparison of Harris’ different responses to Whitaker’s comment about Netanyahu “not listening.”

Trump posted on Oct. 10 on Truth Social that “Harris’ ACTUAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR STUPID, so they replaced it with another answer to save her, or at least make her look better.”

But that’s not what CBS News says happened, The Associated Press reported. (PolitiFact reached out to CBS News, but did not hear back.)

A CBS News spokesman told The Associated Press that Harris said the two statements seen in the preview clip and the full interview aired during his session with “60 Minutes.” The full interview lasted 45 minutes, and was edited to 20 minutes.

CBS News did not respond on the record to the AP about Trump’s criticism.

Kelly McBride, senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, told PolitiFact that this type of editing is typical of broadcast news. (PolitiFact is owned by the Poynter Institute.)

“It’s a time-limited medium, so they’re definitely going to select parts of an answer in an interview,” McBride said. He added that some news outlets have standards against splicing clips together or removing the stumbles of presidential candidates.

McBride said that while he does not know the details of what happened with that “60 Minutes” interview, in most cases the media is editing “to make the production more digestible for the audience, not to deceive, nor to make a candidate appear better or worse.”

But because CBS News has not released the full, unedited interview with Harris, Trump has been able to question the outlet’s journalistic integrity, McBride said.

“Once you question something, it’s really up to the news organization to explain and demonstrate why it’s reliable, and that shouldn’t be hard to do,” McBride said.

Was the Harris interview a campaign finance violation?

In his criticism of Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview, Trump claimed campaign finance rules may have been broken.

In the absence of details or evidence from the Trump team, political experts we contacted said they did not believe this interview was a campaign finance violation.

Some social media users claimed the interview was edited to favor Harris and this amounted to an “in-kind contribution.”

This type of contribution is a non-monetary donation to a political candidate, such as when an organization provides goods or services to a candidate for free or at a reduced price, according to the Federal Election Commission.

But Dan Weiner, director of the government and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said it’s a “pretty far-fetched argument.”

“I don’t know that the FEC or any other government body has concluded that (news) coverage that some people might have thought was favorable was an in-kind contribution,” Weiner said. “This is pretty far from anything I think the FEC or any other regulatory body would ever pursue.”

Weiner added that the social media users could be referring to the Federal Election Commission’s rule that public debates must be structured so that they do not promote or advance one candidate over another. If a debate is biased toward a candidate, that “could constitute an illegal contribution,” he said.

Poynter’s McBride said, “When I look at the tapes, I don’t think (Harris) looks better in either of them. I can’t discern a nefarious motive looking at the two different tapes.”

Our verdict

Trump told Truth Social that Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview could be “a major campaign finance violation.”

The Trump campaign declined to elaborate or provide evidence about what campaign finance law may have been violated. The burden of proof is on the speaker, and Trump has presented no basis for this claim. Political pundits also said Trump’s statement was far-fetched and baseless.

We rate this statement as False.