Interviewing 74-year-old President Donald Trump for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” 78-year-old host Leslie Stahl showed her age together with the long worn-out news program no longer a major source of original broadcast journalism. During the heyday newspapers and TV journalism, CBS’ “60 minutes” carried the kind of prestige that drew large audiences when it was one of the only source of investigative journalism on TV. Now a stale shell of its former self, “60 Minutes” made the cardinal mistake of trying to set Trump up in a news-making combative style interview. Getting the president to agree to the interview, Stahl should have shown more neutrality, than her biased colleagues in broadcast and print journalism all backing 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden for president. Stahl’s overly aggressive style backfired, prompting Trump to abruptly end the interview.
Stahl and CBS won’t admit they treated the president badly, displaying the preconceived bias that prompted Trump to end the interview. But what happened with the 78-year-old Stahl, like other aging professionals, she compensated for her lack of sharpness, going after Trump with too much aggression. “Look at the bias, hatred and rudeness on behalf of 60 Minutes and CBS. Tonight’s anchor, Kiristen Welker, is far worse! #MAGA,” Trump tweeted, linking his unedited interview with Stahl, preempting CBS’ Sunday show. “Are you ready for some tough questions,” Stahl asked Trump before starting the interview. Trump thinks that the press gives Biden as pass, asking him softball questions, refusing to challenge him on anything. Over the course of the Covid-19 crisis, Trump’s been hit by an overly aggressive White House press corps, often accusing Trump of mishandling the pandemic.
Stahl immediately went after Trump on Covd-19, Obamacare and climate change, all of which have become Democrat talking points during the 2020 campaign. When a supposedly disinterested journalist shows the same kind of partisan bias as his Democrat rivals, there’s something out-of-whack with today’s journalism. Trump wasn’t going to let the grandmotherly Stahl push him around or set him up for a prejudicial interview. Stahl’s too over the hill to expect that someone like Trump would play along with her attempt to discredit him on two weeks before the Nov. 3 election on national TV. Stahl refused to discus the New York Post story showing that Biden was deeply involved with his son 50-year-old Hunter in egregious corruption. Trump realized that Stahl wouldn’t give both sides a fair shake, instead going after the president, giving Biden a pass like the rest of the fake media.
Trump told Stahl in the interview she was “like Big Tech, you’re protecting him,” referring to Joe’s corruption as detailed carefully in the New York Post. Stahl told Trump that Biden wasn’t mired in a corruption scandal, ignoring, like the rest of the mainstream media, the New York Post story. Stahl knows, like everyone else, that the government recovered Hunter’s disabled iBook computer from which they extract a reassure trove of data about his corruption in Ukraine, Russia and China. “He’s a corrupt politician, and he’s walking with ice cream. An the rest the media asks is what kind of ice cream, what flavor the ice cream,” referring to the fake press’s approach to Biden. Yet when it comes to Trump, Stahl’s an overly aggressive approach tries to indict Trump for some type of malfeasance. Stahl got what she deserved, Trump walking out of the interview.
CBS didn’t like that Trump posted the unedited interview on Twitter for all to see Stahl’s inappropriate behavior during the interview. Playing the interview on Twitter, Trump hopes to damage CBS’ ratings when the interview airs Sunday night. Showing that Stahl works her craft like a Democrat operative, she accused Trump in the interview of backing the right wing militia’s attempt to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “You want to lock her up,” Stahl accused Trump of backing Whitmer’s abduction. “Leslie, it’s such a vicious thing that you said. I newer said lock up the governor of Michigan. I would never say that. Why would I say that? Because she’s doing lockdowns?” Trump questioned Stahl. If “60 Minutes” is to survive in the future, they have to retool their programming, especially using 78-year-old reporters to ask biased questions of an incumbent president.
Stahl showed that she’s out-of-her-prime trying to keep pace with Trump and his 62-year-old Vice President Mike Pence. What Stahl doesn’t get is that Trump and Pence have been subjected to the media’s abuse since before taking office in 2017. Media bias against Trump has been confirmed for years by Harvard University study, proving that 95% of press coverage is negative toward Trump. Stahl asked Trump nothing about his three Mideast peace deals, and another one in the Balcans, nor his two nominations for Nobel Peace Prizes. She stayed fixated on Trump conservative Supreme Court pick Amy Coney Barrett. Instead of interviewing Trump, Stahl tried to debate the president as if she were on last night’s debate stage. Unable to give an evenhanded interview, Stahl showed that she’s long overdue for retirement, resorting to Democrat talking points to catch Trump in a trap.
