A 2024 interview of President Donald Trump on Fox News has left eyebrows raised after Twitter users found a significant edit when it came to Trump’s statement about Jeffrey Epstein documents. The trending video has left many critics and Trump supporters alike widely criticizing it, with the latter now urging former Vice President Kamala Harris to think about taking legal action, using Trump himself as a precedence last year.
In the Fox News-syndicated version of the interview, Trump is asked whether he would declassify the Epstein documents. He responds tersely: “Yeah, yeah, I would.” The clip cuts out immediately after that, implying a straightforward vote for disclosure.
The Uncut Version Tells a Different Story
But the full interview, which is widely being posted on social networking websites now, has a different scenario where Trump continues after his first response, “I guess I would. I think that less so, because you don’t know — you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
The longer quote puts Trump’s purported meaning in doubt, asking if the Fox News cut was dishonest. Political reporter David Weigel posted the full cut, writing on X, “As broadcast cuts go, this did a lot better for Trump than the ’60 Minutes’ cut did for Harris.”
Justice Department Contradiction Adds Fuel
Adding to the controversy, the Department of Justice recently admitted it possessed no “client list” among the Epstein files. This is a direct contradiction of a February 2024 statement made by Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, who informed Fox News that she had the list “sitting on her desk.”
Trump’s CBS Lawsuit Sets Legal Precedent
This editing-for-media scandal calls to mind the CBS affair of 2023, when Trump had sued the network over airing an edited interview of Kamala Harris. He had asserted there that editing out Harris’s statements made her appear more coherent than she actually was. The case ended with the parent company of CBS, Paramount, settling the case for $16 million in July 2024.
And now that Trump finds himself at the center of a similar editing scandal, pundits on the internet and legal experts are alike calling for Harris to bring a countersuit, highlighting the irony of Trump benefiting from the same sort of media manipulation he once railed against.
The edit controversy surrounding the Trump Epstein interview points to the greater focus on selective broadcasting, misinformation, and media accountability—particularly in the context of an election cycle where every word is politicized.
