Footage of Donald Trump walking out of an interview with 60 Minutes has been released by network CBS following repeated claims by the US President that he had been treated unfairly.
Trump had already shared unedited clips on his social media throughout the week, breaching the agreement between CBS and the White House. The full interview was aired on Sunday (local time).
Video leaked by Trump before the broadcast date showed the former Celebrity Apprentice host growing increasingly bad-tempered with interviewer Lesley Stahl, alongside his efforts to discredit the journalist and network as "biased" and "fake".
"Look at the bias, hatred and rudeness," he tweeted, later criticising Stahl's "anger" and "constant interruptions".
Following the recording on Tuesday, reports quickly emerged that Trump had abruptly departed around 45 minutes into the intended hour-long interview.
The footage released by the network on Monday confirmed the President had cut the interview short after Stahl questioned him on his social media presence. Trump, an avid and controversial Twitter user, refuted her suggestion that his online behaviour was turning people off, responding: "No, I think I wouldn't be here if I didn't have social media. The media is fake. And frankly, if I didn't have social media, I'd have no way of getting out my voice."
The question developed into a bitter back-and-forth between the two, with Trump accusing Stahl of "inappropriately" bringing up subjects, to which she fired back that she had warned him he would face "tough questions".
He went on to claim that Stahl's 60 Minutes' colleagues had been far more delicate with his Democratic rival.
"Right from the beginning, your first question was, 'there's going to be tough questions'. You don't ask Joe Biden... he's never been asked a question that's hard."
When Stahl started to respond, Trump interrupted: "Excuse me, Lesley, you started with me. Your first statement was, 'are you ready for tough questions?' That's no way to talk."
After the producer advised Stahl of the remaining time, the President announced: "I think we have enough of an interview." Addressing his aide Hope Hicks, he continued: "Okay? That's enough. Let's go."
During the week, Trump had complained on Twitter that Stahl had not worn a mask in the White House, illustrating his claim with a selective clip of their discussion immediately after the interview. CBS argued that Stahl, who had also returned a negative test result prior to her meeting with the President, had been masked at all times except during and briefly after the interview.
Many social media commentators have disagreed with Trump's attempts to portray the interview as biased, with Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, claiming Trump came across as "a whiny, aggrieved baby".
"All he did was lie and obfuscate, and when he was called on it he got up and sulked out," opined author and activist Amy Siskind, who wrote a book on Trump's first year in office.
However, some expressed disappointment in Stahl's interviewing technique, saying her "tough questions" weren't difficult enough. The Atlantic journalist McKay Coppins tweeted that the questions "weren't really tough... at all", while Lawrence Glickman, a historian for the Ivy League college Cornell University, suggested that Biden had ironically faced a much more difficult line of questioning.
"They asked him, and not the guy who recently bragged about acing a dementia test, whether he was senile. They asked him, and not the guy who just got out of the hospital, about his health," he wrote.
"When Trump couldn't name a policy priority, rather than zeroing in on his inability to do so, Stahl changed the subject to 'Who is our biggest foreign adversary?' Other than COVID, she didn’t ask him to defend or explain any of his policies or about his personal tax avoidance."
A CNN fact-check showed Trump made at least 16 false or misleading claims during the interview.
In a statement, the network criticised the leaking of the footage and defended Stahl's reputation as a media veteran: "The White House's unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter 60 Minutes from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting which presidents have participated in for decades.
"Few journalists have the presidential interview experience Lesley Stahl has delivered over her decades as one of the premier correspondents in America."
Administration officials confirmed they had kept their own single-frame copy of the interview, in which only Trump is visible, for White House archival purposes.
