Megyn Kelly sounded the alarm Monday on Bari Weiss and CBS News after a “60 Minutes” interview with Benjamin Netanyahu aired over the weekend with edits she argued were meant to protect the Israeli prime minister in the public eye.
“Why? Why did Bari Weiss and her CBS cut from the interview of Netanyahu all the references by Netanyahu attacking Americans who have questions about Israel as anti-American? Is it possible they believe that might make him look bad and further alienate Americans?” the conservative podcast host and journalist posed.
“I think there’s a level of protection being run now on a foreign leader that’s just obvious. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and you have to ask yourself why and whether we’re allowing this.”
One specific concern Kelly raised on Monday’s installment of “The Megyn Kelly Show” was in regards to a “60 Minutes” edit around Netanyahu’s argument that there is an organized social media campaign to bolster anti-Israel sentiment.
“The deterioration of support for Israel in the United States I would say correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media,” Netanyahu told “60 Minutes” journalist Major Garrett on Sunday. “And that by itself is not what caused it, and I don’t believe in censoring them or anything. But I’ll tell you what happened: We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms, with fake addresses, to break the American sympathy to Israel, to break the American-Israeli alliance because they think it’s in their interest.
“And they do it in a clever way,” the prime minister continued. “You hear a text message, ‘I’m a red-blooded Texan, I’ve always supported Israel, but I can’t stand what they’re doing, I’m turning against Israel.’ And then you trace the address to some basement in Pakistan, you know? And that’s something that has hurt us badly.”
Kelly decried the fact that CBS did not air “that whole thing about the bot farms” in their network broadcast. (While it’s typical journalistic practice for interviews to be edited down to 12 or 13 minutes for “60 Minutes” on linear, the full 80-minute interview was made available to view on YouTube as the shortened network version wrapped Sunday evening.)
“The version that aired on TV included some of what we just played, but it was combined with a section from the very end of the interview, which focused on Israel’s tactics to respond to the sentiment shift, not the shift itself,” Kelly said, arguing that the edit allowed Netanyahu to blindly blame social media for the decline in social support for Israel rather than the actions of Israel itself.
“It’s not Israel’s behavior. It has nothing to do with those tens of thousands dead in Gaza, or Gaza looking like a parking lot now, or what appears to be a thirst for more war by Israel,” Kelly said.
The host concluded that “they’re not interested at CBS in talking about” the “actual shift itself.”
“Why is that? Why does CBS not want to discuss that? Could it be the Ellisons and their handmaiden Bari Weiss, who runs CBS now, who’s huge on Israel? It’s truly her favorite issue. That is true,” Kelly continued. “She’s extremely concerned about Israel, and has been for a long, long time … She’s been on a cancellation crusade for a long time against anybody who she thinks is too critical of Israel, and now she’s in charge of CBS, and honestly, you can see it in the coverage. You can see it.”
Elsewhere in the segment, Kelly pointed to “60 Minutes” edits that worked around statements from Netanyahu that indicated Americans who disapprove of the war in Iran — and therefore disagree with Israel — are themselves “anti-American.”
Watch Kelly’s full analysis of Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview with Netanyahu in the video below.
While Kelly seized on what was taken out of the “60 Minutes” broadcast, other independent journalists applauded Weiss and CBS News for pulling together the prime minister’s first broadcast interview in the U.S. since the Iran War began in just 24 hours.
“CBS landed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first U.S. broadcast interview since the Iran war began,” CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote of the sit-down on Monday. “It was taped on Saturday and featured on ’60 Minutes’ last night — another quick-turn exclusive interview for the newsmag under Bari Weiss.”
“Very proud of my old friend for scoring this interview, knowing it will attract critics from the left and right — and maybe inside CBS,” journalist Jon Ralston wrote on X of Garrett’s work. “I have only watched the segment that aired (not the extended yet), but Major pressed Netanyahu, tried to extract info and even when he didn’t answer, that was illuminating, too.”
