There is no one alive who embodies the adage “every accusation is a confession” better than Donald Trump. The presidential candidate is the first to scream “fake news” while simultaneously lying through his teeth, and he loves to portray a tough guy even with a jelly-soft ego that’s constantly crumbling to the floor. His depressingly lengthy tenure in the spotlight has gifted the public ample evidence of his buffoonery, and his latest offense adds yet another layer of icing to the cake that no one asked for.
The former president doesn’t have a stellar reputation when it comes to CBS’ 60 Minutes as it is, but his early October meltdown has definitely soured his already vinegar reputation. Trump and his competitor Kamala Harris were both tapped to appear on the program in early October, but after weeks of hemming and hawing about making an appearance, the former president backed out near the 11th hour. Harris gladly participated in the interview, broadcasting her policy points to undecided voters.
Now that the interview has hit screens across the nation, Trump is desperate to play the victim rather than come across as the coward he is – and for perhaps the first time ever, 60 Minutes is playing hardball.
Making history as perhaps the most mature “f*** you” ever recorded, 60 Minutes interviewer Scott Pelley introduced the program with a special intro just for Mr. Trump. In his dulcet tones, he laid out the “shifting explanations” the Trump team gave for not wanting to do the interview. And each one was more absurd than the last.
Falling in line with his vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, the campaign didn’t want fact-checking to be mandatory. A master of hypocrisy, Trump’s second point of contention centered on a fabricated narrative. Trump claimed that he needed an apology for his 2020 60 Minutes interview – citing an incorrect allegation that Lesley Stahl claimed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop came from Russia. The claim is easy to disprove – the absolutely bananas interview, which Trump scuttled away from more than 40 minutes early, is available in full on YouTube.
We highly encourage you to watch the interview, especially near the 14-minute mark. It shows Trump petulantly stomping out of the room before sending his then-Vice President, Mike Pence, in to finish the job. It’s almost too painful to be funny, but it all comes back to Pelley’s subtly scathing opening remarks, “Trump has said [Harris] doesn’t do interviews because she can’t handle them.”
If Harris is unable to rise to an interview occasion, she gives no impression of it on 60 Minutes. She sat tight through the uncomfortable questions and followed through to the bitter end, making the most of what was possibly her last opportunity to speak directly to the American people. After all, with Trump opting to drop out of the second presidential debate days after doing the first, there is little opportunity to showcase policy in a large scale from here on out.
Trump is taking the interview as well as a cat takes to water. The former president took to Truth Social to air his grievances.
Trump consistently threatens the media and claims that his competitors are cheating, even when he’s given the same opportunities. The man had every opportunity to participate in the interview, to make himself look presidential by discussing his policies, or by giving context to his administration’s aims. Instead, he played the victim throwing out buzzwords like, “campaign finance fraud,” like he wasn’t convicted of committing fraud this year.
It’s all giving desperate, like that one kid in every group project who doesn’t participate but blames the team when they don’t get full marks. That intro was less brutal and more directly honest about the business mogul’s antics, but it’s a quality we don’t see often anymore – especially not when Trump is concerned. Now that Trump sees the potential cost of what he missed, he’ll kick and scream until his loyal cronies soothe his aching baby heart. But it won’t fix the fact that those who matter, the people who will vote on November 5th, missed out on one of the last opportunities to hear why he should be president.
