Former President Donald Trump has pulled out of a scheduled interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, the network said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Republican presidential nominee previously accepted an invitation to participate in the long running newsmagazine’s election special, which was scheduled to air on Monday, Oct. 7, the statement said.
“After initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate,” the network said. “Pelley will address this Monday evening.”
The announcement was made hours before the network was scheduled to air the vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung disputed the claims in a post on X, insisting that the network “begged for an interview” but “nothing was ever scheduled or locked in.” Cheung also said 60 Minutes “insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented.”
Later in a separate post, Cheung raged against the program, calling it “a relic of the past, unable to keep up with the times and changing media environment, instead turning into liberal, biased propaganda.”
The campaign referred the Daily Beast to Cheung’s post when contacted for comment. The program did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast on Cheung’s fact-checking claim.
Speaking from a press conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said, “I’d love to do 60 Minutes, I do everything.” The former president said he was waiting for an apology from the program for dismissing coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop case in the last election cycle.
“They came to me and would like me to do an interview, but first, I want to get an apology because the last time I did an interview with them, if you remember, they challenged me on the computer,” Trump said. “They said the laptop from hell was from Russia. And I said, ‘it wasn’t from Russia it was from Hunter.’ And I never got an apology, so I’m sort of waiting.”
The program’s interview with Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will air on Monday as planned, the network said. 60 Minutes said their invitation to the Republican nominee still stands.
Trump previously sat down for an interview with the program before the 2020 presidential election, where he raged against the questions asked by host Lesley Stahl before abruptly walking out.
“When you started with me, your first statement was: ‘are you ready for tough questions?’ That’s no way to talk,” Trump told the host before a producer warned them they were running out of interview time.
“I think we have enough of an interview here,” Trump told an aide. “That’s enough. Let’s go.”
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