Top 8: CBS’s Worst Moments of Election Interference Against Conservatives 

UPDATED:

CBS News has a serious addiction problem. They can’t stop using dishonest techniques to help out their liberal friends while harming conservatives. 

Most recently, CBS got in trouble for their deceptive edits of their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The so-called “Tiffany network” aired two different answers to the same question on Israel in its 60 Minutes, First they aired a word-salad answer on the October 6 Face the Nation. But when the interview aired on October 7, the answer was entirely different.

With Harris CBS News used dishonest edits to make the Democratic presidential candidate look better. However, in the case of conservatives, CBS has a record of employing their video editors to make them look bad. 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson exposed how CBS sliced and diced up his October 13, edition of CBS’s Face the Nation interview. Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has also been the victim of CBS chopping up videos. 

It’s not just selective edits. CBS will target conservatives with investigative pieces based on “fake news” sources (See Rathergate). They will also set them up with ambush interviews (See Connie Chung’s interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s mother) or even cut their mic off during a live debate, as they did with VP candidate J.D. Vance.  

A look through MRC’s archives shows CBS has a long history of using dishonest techniques to interfere with the election of conservative candidates. 

1. RatherGate 

In 2004, Dan Rather’s most corrupt act as a journalist occurred when he and producer Mary Mapes attempted an election-year hit job on then-President George W. Bush.

Just eight weeks before election day, in a September 8, 2004 report on 60 Minutes, Dan Rather claimed “new” evidence showing Bush received “preferential treatment” during his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard.

“Newly discovered documents spark new questions,” Rather hyped that night on his CBS Evening News. “CBS News has exclusive information, including documents, that now sheds new light on the President’s service record.”

The documents in question were supposedly from Bush’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, typed on his office typewriter decades before computers and word processors became common in the workplace. It didn’t take long before observers on the Internet highlighted how the “newly discovered documents” looked more like something whipped up in Microsoft Word using the default Times Roman font than on an early 1970s typewriter.

The supposed author of the documents, Col. Killian, was no longer living, but others from the Texas Air National Guard office disputed the documents. Killian’s boss, Major General Bobby Hodges, told the Los Angeles Times that he didn’t believe the documents were real. Killian’s secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told the Dallas Morning News that “those are not real….They’re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.”

Instead of honestly admitting error, Rather dug in but, by September 20, Rather finally acknowledged that CBS “could no longer vouch for their authenticity.” He revealed that his source had been Bill Burkett, a left-wing Texas activist who, Rather admitted, had been trying “for several years now to discredit President Bush’s military service record.”

In the end, Mapes was fired and after the election, Rather announced he would step down in March 2005 after 24 years as anchor of the CBS Evening News. 

2. Dan Rather’s Failed Ambush of George HW Bush

On Monday, January 25, 1988, Dan Rather, the anchor of the CBS Evening News at the time, laid a trap and attempted to ambush then-Vice President George H.W. Bush on live TV. Of course, Rather’s goal was to embarrass the leading Republican contender for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. 

The segment was supposed to be a “candidate’s profile.” Instead, Rather screamed at the Vice President over the Iran-Contra scandal, making it the sole topic discussed. Visibly angry, he berated the Vice President: “You’ve made us hypocrites in the face of the world!” 

But Bush didn’t just sit back and take the bias. He zinged the journalist by mentioning a truly embarrassing moment for Rather. In 2008, Rich Noyes quoted from The Quest for the Presidency, recounting: “…a notorious incident several months earlier when Rather, on location in Miami, had got sore at having his newscast held up by a tennis match and had walked off his set to call New York to bitch about it.

The tennis match had ended in his absence, and CBS, with nothing else to put on the air, had gone to black — an empty screen — for six minutes. It was the ultimate embarrassment for a network…” 

So when an unhinged Rather yelled and berated Bush, the Republican retorted: “It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your whole career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Bush lowered the boom: “I have respect for you, but I don’t have respect for what you’re doing tonight!” 

Even Rather’s colleagues in the press were appalled. According to the February 1988 issue of the Media Research Center’s MediaWatch, 60 Minutes co-host Mike Wallace chided, “The style was wrong. Dan lost his cool.” ABC’s Sam Donaldson derided, “Rather went too far…. I don’t think we can get to a situation where we make — on our own authority— accusations.” 

The cover of the February 8, 1988 issue of Time labeled it “the ambush that failed.” Then-Time associate editor (and future Obama official) Richard Stengel criticized the CBS anchor, describing the scene as “a powerful TV journalist hectoring the Vice President, who had been lured into the interview expecting that it would focus on his presidential campaign.” 

3. Speaker Mike Johnson Exposes CBS for Editing Out Arguments They Didn’t Like

On October 14, 2024 House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lashed out at CBS on X.com for how they sliced and diced his interview on the October 13 edition of Face The Nation. He tweeted about how CBS edited out five “important minutes” out of a 15-minute interview — and he exposed the video edits. 

Among the sentences CBS cut were Johnson’s arguments about non-citizens voting, pointing out the “Biden Harris administration sued the governor and the state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, to try to prevent them from cleaning up their voter rolls.” CBS did it again in a follow-up when Johnson said “We passed the SAVE Act. You know, in the house, the SAVE Act says you gotta have proof of citizenship before you register to vote. And Chuck Schumer and the Democrats blocked that in the Senate.”  

The CBS transcript shows what they edited out [and the viewer wouldn’t notice during the broadcast because it’s edited where the shot changes to a full-screen shot of Johnson]: 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the FEMA Director says there’s only $11 billion left from that $20 billion that was allocated. So that’s a different accounting than this 2% you say was distributed.

SPEAKER JOHNSON: Yeah. So they’ve obligated some funds, but they’ve only distributed 2%, [and when I was there on the ground, and you should go, I mean, bring the cameras and talk to the people there, they’ll tell you, don’t- don’t take politicians words for this or the administration’s word, talk to the people there on the ground they had not been provided the resources almost two weeks out from the storm that they desperately needed. And when I was there 13 days, post- you know, post the storm hitting that state, people are still being rescued. They’re stuck in the higher elevations in the mountains because the roads are down and all the rest. So they need every- every available resource and all hands on deck.] The rescue and recovery efforts are still going on, and then we address the rest of it. But FEMA was slow to respond. They did not do the job that we all expect and hope that they will do, and there’s going to be a lot of assessment about that as well in the days ahead.

That wasn’t the only edit. When Johnson said there was going to be “some cheating” in this election, Brennan pounced. CBS didn’t want to spread any notion that Republicans are the ones for election integrity.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You know that it is against–

SPEAKER JOHNSON: Glenn Youngkin, the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia –

BRENNAN: The law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections that’s established law.

JOHNSON: Of course it is, of course it is, but of course it is. But here’s the problem, there’s a number of states that are not requiring proof of citizenship when illegals are noncitizens register to vote. We know that’s happening. [Look, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, I was going to say he issued an executive order to clean up their voting rules heading into the election. Less than 30 days out, a couple of days ago, the Obama, I mean, the Biden administration, Department of Justice, Biden Harris administration, sued the governor and the state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, to try to prevent them from cleaning up their voter rolls. Their voter rolls. See, that kind of thing creates a lot of doubt and concern in the minds of a lot of the American people. Why would they do that?]

BRENNAN: But respectfully, Speaker –

JOHNSON: Everybody should want the law to be followed.

The biggest removal of Johnson’s argument came shortly after, when Brennan suggested Johnson was undermining the integrity of elections by suggesting non-citizens will vote! 

CBS didn’t want any discussion of a “SAVE Act,” or how Chuck Schumer and the Democrats oppose any attempt to insure illegal immigrants don’t vote. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Respectfully, Speaker, you both, in the course of this interview, said that you do believe that states have taken measures that will help the integrity of this election

SPEAKER JOHNSON: That’s true-

BRENNAN: – and then you just also seem to undermine confidence in the integrity of the state elections –

JOHNSON: No, no. Margaret. Hold on. Wait a minute. Wait, wait just a minute. It’s not me undermining it. It’s the actions of the Biden-Harris administration and some of these states. Noncitizens are not allowed to vote under federal law.

[BRENNAN: Right.

JOHNSON: But the states have prohibited it. We passed the SAVE act. You know, in the house, the SAVE Act says you gotta have proof of citizenship before you register to vote. And Chuck Schumer and the Democrats blocked that in the Senate. We could have prevented this, the questions that people have about that, but the Democrats chose not to. They opened the border wide. A lot of people theorize that that was so that they could have non citizens to vote. These are realities, Margaret. I wish it weren’t true, but that’s what’s, that’s the concern that people have. And Wisconsin– [CROSSTALK]

BRENNAN: – But, but. People can have lots of concerns, but it is already law that noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections.

JOHNSON: It is a law. That’s correct, but we have to make sure the law is followed. And that is the whole point. That has always been the whole point of the SAVE Act and all the measures that we’ve tried to ensure. I believe, by my count, we have about 16 million illegal aliens in the country since Mayorkas and Harris and Biden opened the border wide. And because of that, there’s concern, because those people are distributed all around the country, as you know, there’s concern some of those people will try to participate in the elections.

Look, some of our House races. I believe the Republicans are going to win the House, grow the House majority, win the Senate and the White House. But in some of our House races, I mean, I have a colleague who was elected by six votes in 2020. Some of these are decided by hundreds or a few 1000s of votes. So if you have non citizens participating against the law, and you have no mechanism in some states to stop it. That is the root of so much of the concern. And of course, you know, in California, they have ballot harvesting right? Ballot harvesting is notorious for opening the door for fraud in Wisconsin, they’re going to put —

BRENNAN: — Mr. Speaker, you seem to be

JOHNSON: – In some counties unmanned ballot boxes in public parks, again

BRENNAN: Contradicting yourself. The states are run by the state government –

JOHNSON: No. I’m stating the facts, Margaret.

BRENNAN: – Not the federal government.

JOHNSON: That’s right. That’s correct. And that’s yeah we hope and pray- ]

BRENNAN: So if your issue is with certain governors, shouldn’t you be talking to them? 

JOHNSON: We have been- we have been and the Republican governors have done heroic work. They’ve done their own audits of the voter rolls to try to ensure and do their best duty to make sure that this is a free, fair and legal election. We’re calling on all the governors to do the same thing, Democrat governors as well, and Democrat led states in the legislature, they need to do the same thing.

4. CBS Moderators Trample All Over Debate Rules to Fight with GOP VP Pick, Cut Off Vance’s Mic

Liberal moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell were so desperate to make Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) look bad, that they repeatedly broke the rules of the debate to fact-check him. And their so-called fact-checks were so wrong that Vance had to call them out for it.

CBS News agreed that they would not fact-check either candidate and would leave it up to the debaters to do that. But throughout the debate, the moderators either offered up fact-checks against Vance. 

Things came to a head when Brennan delivered a dubious fact-check overlooking how the asylum process was being abused by illegal immigrants. Vance spoke up to lay out the real facts of how the system was being manipulated, ultimately leading to O’Donnell to cutting off his microphone.

5. CBS’s Lesley Stahl Scolded Trump In 2020: Hunter Biden Laptop Emails “Can’t be Verified”

CBS tried to suppress the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop and the emails it contained when it came to light in 2020 after the New York Post broke the story in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. It was such a taboo subject for CBS that when President Donald Trump brought up the subject during an October 2020 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, it was edited out of the final broadcast. 

Fortunately, the Trump campaign recorded the segment left on the 60 Minutes cutting room floor so you can see Stahl claim over and over that the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop “can’t be verified”:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Lesley, you’ve discredited yourself. When you say that you’re not going to cover Biden, you’re going to ask him what flavor ice cream he has, okay.

LESLEY STAHL: That’s not me.

TRUMP: Instead of, “Why did Hunter get three and a half million dollars from Moscow?” Instead of, “Why is an energy company paying your son $183,000 a month, or whatever they’re paying him?” And he has no experience in energy. You discredit yourself. I don’t have to discredit you.

STAHL: So this story about Hunter and his laptop, some repair shop found it, the source is Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.

TRUMP: I don’t know anything about that. I just know it’s a laptop and they haven’t-

STAHL: And you’re making this one of the hottest, most important issues…

TRUMP: I don’t know about the two gentleman you mentioned.

STAHL: It’s an important issue-

TRUMP: It’s a very important issue to find out whether or not a man is corrupt, who’s running for president. Who’s accepted money from China, and from Ukraine, and from Russia. Yeah, I think that’s an important issue.

STAHL: All these things have been investigated and discredited.

TRUMP: It’s incredible the way you can try and say this and sit there and look me in the eye and say it. He accepted money, his family, from Russia, from Ukraine, from China and from other places. His brother who didn’t have experience became a big builder in Iraq, without experience. Take a look at what’s going on, Lesley. And then you say that shouldn’t be discussed? It’s the biggest scandal out there, Lesley.

STAHL: And you think it’s the biggest issue to campaign on?

TRUMP: I think it’s one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever seen, and you don’t cover it. You want to talk about-

STAHL: Well, because it can’t be verified.

TRUMP: You want to talk about insignificant things.

STAHL: I’m telling you.

TRUMP: Of course it can be verified. Excuse me, they found a laptop. Lesley, listen.

STAHL: It can’t be verified.

TRUMP: What can’t be verified?

STAHL: The laptop.

TRUMP: Why do you say that? Even the family hasn’t… The family on the laptop… He’s gone into hiding for five days, he’s gone into hiding.

STAHL: He’s preparing for your debate.

TRUMP: Oh, it’s taking him five days to prepare? I doubt it, I doubt it. Okay, go ahead.

6. Connie Chung Cons Newt’s Mom: “Whisper It to Me, Just Between You and Me”

Hoping to boost the ratings for an upcoming Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, CBS News managed to mar Newt Gingrich’s first day as Speaker on January 4, 1995. The day before, CBS released the text of an exchange taped 14 days earlier between Connie Chung and Newt’s mother. Chung coaxed Kathleen Gingrich into telling what Newt thought of Hillary Clinton. Posing the now infamous “Why don’t you just whisper it to me, just between you and me,” Mrs. Gingrich whispered “She’s a bitch.”

CBS was engulfed in criticism for using a statement which many thought Chung made clear was “off the record.” 

CBS News President Eric Ober bizarrely complained to The Washington Post: “It’s a legitimate, very good interview that has unfortunately been reduced to one five-letter summary.” Chung introduced the actual piece on the January 5, 1995 Eye to Eye by saying, “You may have heard one small portion of this interview. Now you will see it in context.” It seems both forgot it was CBS which promoted the excerpt and showed it on CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News and Up to the Minute.

7. DeSantis Smashes CBS Reporter’s Fake Vaccine Narrative, So CBS Takes Him Out of Context

CBS ran a malicious and deceptive hit piece against the Florida governor Ron DeSantis on the April 4, 2021 edition of 60 Minutes. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s whole report proposed DeSantis led a “pay for play” rollout of the COVID vaccine in his state. She spent the majority of the time speaking to his critics, including West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James who alleged wealthy communities were “jumping the line” to procure the vaccine. “It sounds like the Hunger Games!” an alarmed Alfonsi, seriously said.

She touted other critics like Democrat State Rep. Omari Hardy blasting DeSantis for not prioritizing minorities for getting the vaccine before seniors.

At a press conference, the CBS correspondent confronted DeSantis, accusing him of a “pay for play” scheme with the vaccine rollout, because he gave the most popular grocery chain in the state, Publix, the rights to distribute the vaccine in certain counties, weeks after receiving donations to his campaign from the store (which also donated to Democrats.) 

However, CBS completely cut out DeSantis’s thorough takedown of Alfonsi’s claim. In the original press conference, he explains for nearly two minutes how wrong the media’s assessment of this has been. “You don’t care about the facts,” he blasted Alfonsi.

Emails from the camp of DeSantis revealed the shady way the CBS 60 Minutes team operated before their hatchet job suggesting (without actual connecting evidence) that DeSantis engaged in a “pay to play” scheme with the Publix supermarket chain on vaccine distribution.

8. CBS Pushes Phony Cocaine Story About George W. Bush

Back in 2000, 60 Minutes devoted a whole segment to crackpot author J.H. Hatfield and his book trashing George W. Bush called Fortunate Son.

They put on this Lesley Stahl segment despite Hatfield being unable to prove Bush was arrested for cocaine possession and despite Hatfield paying for a hit man. Their website announced: “Just because he lied to his editors about being a convicted felon isn’t a good enough reason for those editors to doubt his book.”

While there is less than three weeks to go until Election Day 2024, there is still time for CBS to get in a few more cheap shots against conservative candidates. Consider this a warning to be on the lookout for more CBS shenanigans.