60 Minutes Pushed Harris Right on Econ, Border, While Ignoring Other Vital Issues

Elsie Carson-Holt

With less than a month until Election Day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat down for an interview with Bill Whitaker on CBS's 60 Minutes (10/7/24). (Donald Trump backed out of a similar interview.)

Aside from one televised debate (ABC, 9/10/24), both Harris and Trump have given corporate news outlets remarkably few opportunities to press them on important issues. While Whitaker didn't offer Harris many softball questions—and included some sharp interrogation on the Middle East—his focus frequently started from right-wing talking points and assumptions, particularly over immigration and economic policy.

FAIR counted 29 questions, with 24 of them going to Harris. Those questions began with foreign policy, which also accounted for the most policy-related questions (7). Whitaker also asked her five questions about the economy, four about immigration, and one more generally about her changed positions on immigration, fracking and healthcare. Seven of Whitaker's questions to Harris were unrelated to policies or governing; of the five questions to Walz, the only vaguely policy-oriented one asked him to respond to the charge that he was "dangerously liberal."

'How are you going to pay?'

A Pew survey (9/9/24) shows little correlation between what voters care about and what 60 Minutes (10/7/24) asked Kamala Harris about.

Economic issues are a top priority for many voters. But rather than ask Harris about whether and how her plan might help people economically, or formulate questions to help voters understand the differences between Harris's and Trump's plans, Whitaker focused on two long-standing media obsessions: the deficit and bipartisanship (or lack thereof).

Whitaker first asked Harris: "Groceries are 25% higher, and people are blaming you and Joe Biden for that. Are they wrong?" It's not clear that people primarily blame the administration for inflation, actually; a Financial Times/Michigan Ross poll in March found that 63% of respondents blamed higher prices on “large corporations taking advantage of inflation,” while 38% blamed Democratic policies (CNBC, 3/12/24).

Whitaker went on to list some of Harris's more progressive economic proposals: "expand the child tax credit…give tax breaks to first-time homebuyers…and people starting small businesses."

These are all generally politically popular, but Whitaker framed his question about them not in terms of the impact on voters, but the impact on the federal deficit, citing a deficit hawk think tank:

But it is estimated by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that your economic plan would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. How are you going to pay for that?

There is a very popular assumption in corporate media that federal deficits are of critical importance—that is, when Democrats are proposing to provide aid and public services to people. When Republicans propose massive tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, the same media tend to forget their deficit obsession (FAIR.org, 1/25/21).

It is worth noting—since Whitaker did not—that the CRFB found that Trump’s plan, which follows that Republican playbook, would increase the debt by $7.5 trillion. One might also bear in mind that US GDP is projected to be more than $380 trillion over the next decade.

Dissatisfied with Harris's rather oblique answer, Whitaker insisted: "But pardon me, Madam Vice President, the question was how are you going to pay for it?" When Harris responded that she intended to "make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share of taxes," Whitaker scoffed: "We’re dealing with the real world here. How are you going to get this through Congress?"

After Harris argued that congressmembers "know exactly what I'm talking about, 'cause their constituents know exactly what I'm talking about," Whitaker shot back, "And Congress has shown no inclination to move in your direction."

Sure, journalists shouldn't let politicians make pie-in-the-sky promises, but it's true that Harris's proposals are supported by majorities of the public. Whitaker did viewers—and democracy—no favors by focusing his skepticism not on a corrupt system that benefits the wealthy, but on Harris’s critique of that system.

'A historic flood'

Serious efforts to count the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States show little sign of the "flood" touted by 60 Minutes (Pew, 7/22/24).

Whitaker's framing was even more right-wing on immigration. His first question,  framed by a voiceover noting that "Republicans are convinced immigration is the vice president's Achilles’ heel":

You recently visited the southern border and embraced President Biden’s recent crackdown on asylum seekers, and that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that’s the right answer now, why didn’t your administration take those steps in 2021?

Whitaker is referring to Biden's tightening restrictions so that refugees cannot be granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. It's certainly valid to question the new policies; the ACLU (6/12/24) has argued they are unconstitutional, for instance.

But Whitaker clearly wasn't interested in constitutionality or human rights. His questioning started from the presumption that immigration is a problem, and used the dehumanizing language that is all too common in corporate media reporting on immigrants (FAIR.org, 8/23/23):

Whitaker: But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?

Harris: It's a longstanding problem. And solutions are at hand. And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.

Whitaker: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?

Harris: I think—the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem, OK? But the—

Whitaker: But the numbers did quadruple under your watch.

As others have pointed out, using flood metaphors paints immigrants as "natural disasters who should be dealt with in an inhumane fashion" (Critical Discourse Studies, 1/31/17).

But Whitaker is also using a right-wing talking point that's entirely misleading. Border "encounters" increased sharply under Biden, but these encounters, as we have explained before (FAIR.org, 3/29/24),

are not a tally of how many people were able to enter the country without authorization; it’s a count of how many times people were stopped at the border by CBP agents. Many of these people had every right to seek entry, and a great number were turned away. Some of them were stopped more than once, and therefore were counted multiple times.

In fact, only roughly a third were actually released into the country (Factcheck.org, 2/27/24).

Whitaker used these misleading figures to paint undocumented immigration as a crisis, which has been a media theme since the beginning of the Biden administration (FAIR.org, 5/24/21). In fact, the percentage of the US population that is unauthorized has risen only slightly—from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022, the latest year available—which is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24).

'Does the US have no sway?'

Internal controversy over Tony Dokoupil's  confrontational interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates (CBS Mornings, 9/30/24) may have given Bill Whitaker an opening to challenge Harris on whether she was too supportive of Israel.

Whitaker's first questions to Harris, about the Middle East, represented a shift in tone from ABC's questioning at the September debate—where moderator David Muir asked Harris to respond to Trump's charge that "you hate Israel." Whitaker started his interview by pressing Harris about the United States’ continued support of Israel despite its recent escalations:

The events of the past few weeks have pushed us into the brink, if not into, an all-out regional war into the Middle East. What can Hthe US do at this point to prevent this from spinning out of control?

Harris repeated the Biden administration (and, frequently, media) line that Israel has a right to defend itself, while noting that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” and that “this war has to end.” Whitaker pushed back, pointing out that the United States is an active supporter of Israel’s military and, thus, military actions:

But we supply Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, and yet Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden/Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire, he has resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon, he went in anyway. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?

Whitaker continued with two more brief questions about the relationship with Netanyahu. It's possible that his line of questioning was influenced by the controversy  within his network over CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil's interview (9/30/24) with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, which pushed a pro-Israel line hard enough to prompt charges of unprofessionalism (FAIR.org, 10/4/24; Zeteo, 10/9/24).

The three other foreign policy questions concerned US support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Two of the three asked about ending the war: “What does success look like in ending the war in Ukraine?” and “Would you meet with President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a solution to the war in Ukraine?” The third asked whether Harris would "support the effort to expand NATO to include Ukraine."

In contrast to the Middle East line of questioning, Whitaker did not push back against any of Harris's answers, which expressed support for "Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked aggression," and to "have a say" in determining the end of the war.

Crucial missing questions

The aftermath of two hurricanes supercharged by climate change didn't prompt 60 Minutes to ask any questions about climate (CBS, 9/30/24).

Though Whitaker took time to ask Harris what kind of gun she owns and Walz whether he can be "trusted to tell the truth," he didn't ask a single question about abortion, other healthcare issues, the climate crisis or gun control. These are all remarkable omissions.

A Pew Research survey (9/9/24) found abortion was a "very important" issue to more than half of all voters, and to two-thirds of Harris supporters. But Whitaker asked no questions about what Harris and Walz would do to protect or restore reproductive rights across the US.

The healthcare system was another glaring omission by 60 Minutes, though it is voters' second-most important issue, according to the same Pew Research survey; 65% of all voters, and 76% of Harris supporters, said that healthcare was “very important” to their vote.

Healthcare only came up as part of an accusation that "you have changed your position on so many things": Along with shifts on immigration and fracking, Whittaker noted that "you were for Medicare for all, now you're not," with the result that "people don't truly know what you believe or what you stand for." Like a very similar question asked of Harris during the debate (FAIR.org, 9/13/24), it seemed crafted to press Harris on whether her conversion from left-liberal to centrist was genuine, rather than to elicit real solutions for a population with the highest healthcare costs and the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation.

At a moment when Hurricane Helene had just wreaked massive destruction across the Southeast and Hurricane Milton was already promising to deliver Florida its second devastating storm in two weeks, the lack of climate questions was striking. While voters tend to rank climate policy as a lower priority than issues like the economy or immigration, large majorities are concerned about it—and it's an urgent issue with consequences that can't be understated. Yet the only time climate was alluded to was in the flip-flop question, which included the preface, "You were against fracking, now you're for it."

Similarly, a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four people just over three weeks ago; as of this writing (10/15/24), the Gun Violence Archive reported that gun violence, excluding suicide, has killed 13,424 Americans this year. In 2019, the American Psychological Association reported that one-third of Americans said that fear of mass shootings stops them from going to certain places and events. In a Pew Research survey (4/11/24), 59% of public K-12 teachers said they are at least somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting at their school, and 23% have experienced a lockdown.

Yet the two questions Whitaker asked about guns had nothing to do with these realities or fears, or what a Harris/Walz administration would do about them. Instead, he asked Harris, “What kind of gun do you own, and when and why did you get it?” (Harris answered, “I have a Glock, and I have had it for quite some time.”) Whitaker followed up by asking Harris if she had ever fired it. (She said she had, at a shooting range.)

'Out of step'

Walz was mostly asked non-policy questions, things like "Whether you can be trusted to tell the truth," and why his calling Republicans "weird" has become a "rallying cry for Democrats."

In keeping with the media's preoccupation with pushing Democratic candidates to the right, the governor was asked to respond to charges that he was "dangerously liberal" and part of the "radical left": "What do you say to that criticism, that rather than leading the way, you and Minnesota are actually out of step with the rest of the country?"

The right-wing framing of many of the questions asked, and the important issues ignored, might make CBS think about how in step it is with the country and its needs.