CBS News apparently learned nothing from its “60 Minutes” debacle, where parent company Paramount paid President Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over the program’s “creative” editing of a segment featuring then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
That followed a similar settlement with ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos accused the president of being a convicted rapist.
Last Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem appeared on the network’s “Face the Nation” program.
During an interview where Noem was discussing the criminal history of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a known MS-13 gang member, Democrats have chosen to lionize him as their poster child for what they call President Trump’s “radical” border policies.
MS-13 has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.
The Ed O’Keefe, filling in for the show's regular host, Margaret Brennan, asked Noem about Abrego Garcia, and Noem answered him. However, CBS deceptively edited Noem’s reply by about 30 seconds and, in the process, missed a rather important part of his history, which Noem addressed in a post on X that had side-by-side clips of the portion CBS aired and the uncut version, the Daily Wire reports.
“And the one thing that we will continue to do is to make sure that he doesn’t walk free in the United States of America,” Noem said in the clip aired on the program. The following was cut out of her response:
“This individual was a known human smuggler, a MS-13 gang member, an individual who was a wife beater, and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors,” Noem continued in the unedited clip, later posted to social media.
“Even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off, he was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children,” said Noem. “He needs to never be in the United States of America, and our administration is making sure we’re doing all that we can to bring him to justice.”
Noem alleged that CBS had “shamefully edited” her interview to “whitewash” Garcia.
“This morning, I joined CBS to report the facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Instead, CBS shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth about this MS-13 gang member and the threat he poses to American public safety,” Noem wrote on X.
The administration’s efforts to deport the MS-13 gangbanger hit another roadblock last week when U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, put the deportation on hold until she can hold an evidentiary hearing on Garcia’s lawsuit to block his deportation to Uganda.
Xinis had previously inserted herself in the case when she ordered the administration to “take all available steps to facilitate the return” of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. after he was shipped to El Salvador.
CBS defended once again editing an interview to the detriment of the Trump administration.
“Secretary Noem’s ‘Face the Nation’ interview was edited for time and met all CBS News standards,” a CBS representative told The New York Post. “The entire interview is publicly available on YouTube, and the full transcript was posted early Sunday morning on CBSNews.com.”
President Trump doesn’t call mainstream news sources such as CBS “fake news” for nothing.
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