The roundtable of “Morning Joe” hosts on Tuesday railed against CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’ decision to hold a “60 Minutes” segment for a lack of on-record administration voices, claiming there was “no good reason” for holding it back.
CBS News pulled a “60 Minutes” segment on the Trump administration’s shipment of Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador on Sunday, and Weiss claimed she wanted on-record Trump administration responses beyond their refusal to comment. Critics have accused Weiss and David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, of pulling the segment to appease President Donald Trump, who last week said “60 Minutes” has treated him “far worse“ under Ellison’s leadership. Ellison is seeking regulatory approval for his hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Morning Joe” namesake Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday he found it “preposterous” that Weiss demanded the participation of Trump administration officials in order to advance — and air — the piece, claiming it flew in the face of the show’s legacy and legion of legendary correspondents and producers.
“Let’s just talk about the preposterousness of all of this,” Scarborough said before referencing the Watergate scandal. “That Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, those guys wouldn’t run a piece on the Nixon administration because H.R. Haldeman, or Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, or Nixon or Spiro Agnew wouldn’t talk on the record. That is the most preposterous standard ever.”
Weiss told “60 Minutes” staffers in an email last weekend that she wanted the piece to more fully reflect the Trump administration’s position and said she would pass along contacts for deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan.
But Scarborough on Tuesday said the segment, which was accidentally streamed in Canada after an unedited version appeared on a Canadian distributor’s streaming service, did not appear to need more reporting. The nearly 14-minute segment “Inside CEOCT,” by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, featured multiple men detailing the “torture, sexual and physical abuse” and “four months of hell” they endured after their deportation from the U.S. to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
“This isn’t like ‘60 Minutes II’ piece on George [W.] Bush’s National Guard service, where they really did need to do more reporting,” Scarborough said, referencing a 2004 Dan Rather report that relied on documents it could not authenticate. “They got the people in front of the camera that were in that jail telling the story, and they just they balked on it, and there’s no good reason they balked on it.”
You can watch the full segment above.
