CBS used to be in the journalism business.
Its program 60 Minutes would investigate important stories and scandals and try to find out the truth.
It did something a lot like what Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe still do today, holding the powerful to account and exposing waste, fraud and abuse.
Now CBS is in the same business as CNN, MSNBC and other fake news organizations: it pushes propaganda and lies in order to try to help the Democratic party and advance the far-left extreme views of its owners and employees.
The first casualty of this is the truth.
A perfect example happened recently with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who 60 Minutes tried to frame for something he never did.
Anatomy of a Hit Piece
In their report on DeSantis, 60 Minutes made up a fake story whereby DeSantis had done a pay-for-play plan: taking $100,000 in campaign contributions from the grocery chain Publix and giving them the exclusive right to be the first to offer COVID-19 vaccines in return.
The only problem? It’s simply not true.
Publix didn’t get the exclusive first rights to distribute the vaccine, as DeSantis explained when 60 Minutes reporter Sharyn Alfonsi asked him. As DeSantis explained, the vaccine was available at Walgreens, Wal-Mart and other locations as well, not just Publix, and its first rollout at Publix had nothing to do with a pay-for-play.
So: CBS simply edited out the part of his answer that showed they were wrong and ran the story anyway.
“Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign. And then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach” Alfonsi accuses DeSantis, who lets her know she’s wrong and pushing a fake narrative.
“I met with the county mayor, I met with the administrator, I met with all the folks at Palm Beach County and I said, ‘Here’s some of the options: We can do more drive-thru sites, we can give more to hospitals, we can do the Publix.’ And they said, ‘We think that would be the easiest thing for our residents.”
Alfonsi stuck to her accusation of pay-for-play, which DeSantis again denied, saying:
“It’s a fake narrative. I just disabused you of the narrative. And you don’t care about the facts. Because, obviously, I laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable.”
60 Minutes wanted to make it look like DeSantis was just straight up lying, so they put him denying it without really explaining any proof.
The trick, obviously, is that 60 Minutes cut out the part where DeSantis actually explained why the accusations weren’t true.
“First of all, the first pharmacies that had [the vaccine] were CVS and Walgreens and they had a long-term care mission, so they were going to the long-term care facilities. They got the vaccine in the middle of December, they started going to the long-term care facilities the third week in December to do LTCs. So that was their mission, that was very important and we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points,” DeSantis explained.
“So yes, you had the counties, you had some drive-thru sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more. So we reached out to other retail pharmacies: Publix, Walmart, obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission and we said we’re going to use you as soon as you’re done with that.”
As DeSantis noted, Publix came forward offering to do the vaccines, but it was far from cornering the market or getting special treatment.
This is wild. Watch Ron DeSantis’s full answer on Publix, Walgreen’s and CVS vaccine distribution and look at the edited cut 60 Minutes used: pic.twitter.com/FqTRgOZS9Z
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) April 5, 2021
‘It Was Intentionally False’
Palm Beach’s Democratic Mayor Dave Kerner wasn’t impressed by the 60 Minutes hit piece at all, saying:
“The reporting was not just based on bad information – it was intentionally false. I know this because I offered to provide my insight into Palm Beach County’s vaccination efforts and ’60 Minutes’ declined. They know that the governor came to Palm Beach County and met with me and the county administrator and we asked to expand the state’s partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County.”
“We have confronted this pandemic for over a year. Our residents, like all Americans, are tired. And the media is making it worse. They are hellbent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks. 60 Minutes should be ashamed,” Kerned added.
Amen to that.
