The Daily Populous Wednesday October 2nd, 2024 morning edition
Authored by cnn.com and submitted by champdo

Former President Donald Trump has backed out of a previously scheduled interview with “60 Minutes,” the most-watched newsmagazine in the United States, CBS News said Tuesday evening.

CBS disclosed Trump’s change of plans a few hours before the network hosts a vice-presidential debate between Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“For over half a century, 60 Minutes has invited the Democratic and Republican tickets to appear on our broadcast as Americans head to the polls,” the network said in a statement. “This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes.”

Trump had committed to the interview first, followed by Harris, through campaign spokespeople, CBS said. Veteran CBS anchor and correspondent Scott Pelley was lined up to interview Trump.

“After initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate,” CBS said.

The network was notified earlier Tuesday, throwing a wrench into its programming plans, since the Harris and Trump interviews were supposed to air on a special Monday night edition of “60 Minutes” next week.

With no additional debates scheduled between Trump and Harris, the traditional “60 Minutes” sit-down was one of the final times before the November election for voters to see both candidates on a major television program.

CBS said the primetime special will still go forward with an interview with Harris. Correspondent Bill Whitaker is slated to follow Harris on the campaign trail and interview her later this week.

“Our original invitation to former President Donald Trump to be interviewed on 60 Minutes stands,” the network said.

In a statement, the Trump campaign denied it had agreed to the interview.

“Fake News. 60 Minutes begged for an interview, even after they were caught lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop back in 2020. There were initial discussions, but nothing was ever scheduled or locked in,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said.

“They insisted on cutting out of the interview to do fact-checking,” he added.

Contrary to the Trump camp’s assertion that no interview was scheduled, two sources with knowledge of the matter said Pelley was slated to sit down with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club on Thursday and attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Asked by CNN if there was still a chance Trump might sit for the interview, Cheung said, “Now that they’ve lied about the interaction, they just f**ked themselves.”

The Harris campaign immediately slammed Trump over the decision.

“Afraid of the debate stage. Afraid of 60 minutes. And his campaign team - after the last three days of increasingly unhinged and unstable ranting at his rallies - is clearly afraid of exposing him beyond comfortable confines,” said Harris senior adviser David Plouffe.

In October 2020, Trump sat down with “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl and abruptly ended the interview when he apparently objected to Stahl’s questions.

The CBS newsmagazine is typically a much-sought-after destination for presidential candidates due to its large viewership.

Taggard on October 1st, 2024 at 22:21 UTC »

Can you blame him? This is how he answers questions...

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you so much for coming to Michigan. My name is Ashley and I work at the Chrysler plant. Like many auto workers, I am deeply concerned about the future of our industry. With many jobs being outsourced as we speak, what action will you take to ensure that our jobs stay in America so we can continue to build the best cars in the world here in Michigan?

DONALD TRUMP: So, pretty much as we’ve been saying, and what I want to do is I want to be able to — Look, your business — Years ago in this area, I was honored as the man of the year. It was maybe 20 years ago. Oh, and the fake news heard about it. They said, it never happened. It never happened. And I didn’t know who it was. It was a group that honored me as man of the year. The fakers back there, see the fake news. But they said — They said, oh — And they looked and, you know, they said it never happened. But I said, I swear to you, it happened.

It did happen. I was man of the year. And I came and I made a speech and I said, why do you allow them to take your car business away? Why do you allow it to happen? They’re taking your business away. And I didn’t know too much about it. All I know is they were taking your car industry away from you. They said it never happened.

And lo and behold, somebody said, I remember the event. And then we found out and we had everything. We got the awards. We had everything. It did happen. But I gave a speech, which at the time was pretty controversial. We can’t let them take your car business away. It’s such an important business.

And you know it’s an important business even in times of war where they switch over. And it was really something. And I looked at that speech from, I don’t know, it’s like 19, 20 years ago. And I could repeat it now without changing a word.

You cannot let foreign countries, and a lot of the times our worst foes are our so-called friends, okay? You know, our friends, the European Union takes tremendous advantage of us. As an example, they give us cars by the millions. We don’t have too many Chevrolets in the middle of European cities, okay? European Union is brutal. They don’t take our farm products for the most part. They don’t take a lot. But unlike Kamala, who always complains and doesn’t do anything, I keep saying, why don’t you do?

I saw Marsha the other day. Why doesn’t she, why didn’t she do it four years ago almost? And I say that, you know, she’s on the border today trying just to, what a day for the border. She goes to the border today, and they just announced just before she got up to speak that more than 13,000 murderers from jail, solitary confinement people in many cases, were released.

But I just say, let’s go back. So we can’t let them take our businesses. And we’re not gonna let them take our businesses. And you can control that so easily through good policy. Not her kind of policy, by the way. She changed her policy 15 times. No fracking. Oh, I like fracking. Defund the police. She wants to defund the police. Now, oh, I love the police all of a sudden. By the way, when anybody is into defunding the police even for a day during their career, they can no longer serve as President of the United States, I can tell you.

So we’re not gonna let them take our businesses. And really, a lot of that’s determined by our taxation policy. When China has to pay all that money, the people that liked me the best were the steel companies because I saved them. They were dumping China and others, but mostly China was dumping steel in here at levels that nobody had ever seen before.

And it was putting the steel companies out of business. I put a 50% and 100% tax on the dumping of steel and the steel companies thrived. I saved them, and you have to have the steel companies. So we’ll do the same thing.

And you don’t worry about it. Here’s what you have to do. I only ask you to do one thing, and then you can sleep beautifully all night long, go to a job you love, and get a lot of money at the end of the week. You know what the thing is? Vote for Trump. If you vote for Trump, everything’s gonna be perfect.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/it1J3V5QqMk?t=5661&si=tFY8IY7dE9xqQ_rj

Llake2312 on October 1st, 2024 at 22:13 UTC »

He won’t debate and he’s unlikely to do any interviews outside Fox, Newsmax etc because his rhetoric has become more bonkers and simultaneously somehow more authoritarian. It’s a bad combo that he absolutely doesn’t want to be taken to task over.

dbag3o1 on October 1st, 2024 at 22:11 UTC »

Just back out of the election, Donald.