Raw transcript released as part of FCC investigation into ‘news distortion’

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) on Wednesday released the unedited transcript of the now-infamous 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which aired on CBS in October 2024. The network provided the transcript as part of the FCC’s investigation into whether CBS violated its “news distortion” policy by deceptively editing portions of the interview.

Artless Dodger: Harris Flustered in Substance-Free 60 Minutes Interview

Many observers had mocked the lengthy word salad Harris offered—in response to a question about U.S. policy toward Israel—in a clip CBS played on Face the Nation to promote the interview. When the show finally aired, Harris appeared to give a completely different answer to the same question. The unedited transcript reveals how Harris’s meandering and largely nonsensical answer was chopped up to make it appear as though she was uttering a coherent thought.

Unedited transcript:

“Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region, and we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

Pre-show promo:

“Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”

What actually aired on 60 Minutes:

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

CBS defended its actions. “As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president’s answers to 60 Minutes’ many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers. 60 Minutes’ hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves,” the network said in a statement.

Harris was a subpar candidate who was historically reluctant to have unscripted conversations with journalists who weren’t openly supportive of her campaign. In the words of journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Martin, her team of advisers sought to keep Harris “hermetically sealed in the manufacturer’s box, like she would retain more value without exposure to air and sunlight.” This was largely due to the candidate’s inability to give comprehensible answers to easy questions.

“They wanted a stenographer in the room. They wanted staff in the room,” celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan said on Tuesday. The Harris campaign had allegedly tried to arrange an interview on Rogan’s podcast before the election, but it never came to fruition. Some Harris aides suggested the campaign feared a backlash from young left-wing staffers who regarded Rogan as a problematic purveyor of misinformation. A more recent, revisionist account blamed Rogan for being inflexible.

Rogan, for his part, said the Harris campaign was terrified about letting the candidate speak unscripted for several hours. “They wanted it very controlled, and they were really concerned that it wasn’t going to be edited,” he said.