Every producer involved in shelved ‘60 Minutes’ piece should be fired: Stephen Miller
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller discusses the fallout after CBS pulled a ‘60 Minutes’ segment on Trump deportations to an El Salvador prison on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’
White House deputy chief of staff for Policy Stephen Miller called for everyone involved in a shelved "60 Minutes" segment on Trump deportations to an El Salvador prison to be fired on Tuesday, calling the story a "hatchet job" that was trying to gin up sympathy for illegal immigrant gang members.
"Every one of those producers at '60 Minutes' engaged in this revolt, fire them. Clean house," Miller told "Jesse Watters Primetime" guest host Charlie Hurt.
"They're trying to tell sob stories about Tren de Aragua gang members who drill holes in people's hands, who rape and murder little girls. This is the gang that kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered Jocelyn Nungaray. Remember her? That precious 12-year-old girl from Texas who was taken from her mom and went through horrors none of us can even imagine. And you have these '60 Minutes' producers… trying to make us feel sympathetic for these monsters?"
Fox News Digital reached out to CBS regarding Miller's remarks but did not receive an immediate response.
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White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller. (Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Hours before "Inside CECOT" was set to air on Sunday, "60 Minutes" released a statement saying the segment was being delayed because it needed "additional reporting."
The segment, which was leaked online after airing in Canada, features correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing Venezuelan deportees who were sent to El Salvador's maximum-security prison after being deported by the Trump administration. The segment reported half of the 252 Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador did not have criminal backgrounds, and the men she spoke to claimed they were not criminals or gang-affiliated.
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss decided to delay the story after determining that, while the interviews were "powerful," the story ultimately did not "advance the ball" and "was not ready," Fox News Digital reported. Among her notes were urging more effort to get a Trump official on-camera to defend administration policies on immigration, as well as criticizing a "strange" portion of the segment showing Berkeley students analyzing the prison.
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Sharyn Alfonsi has accused Bari Weiss, right, of holding her "60 Minutes" story for political, not editorial, reasons. (Michele Crowe/CBS via Getty Images (left); Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press (right))
The decision came to Alfonsi's dismay, leading her to accuse Weiss of a political move.
"Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices," Alfonsi wrote to the show's colleagues in a memo that quickly leaked to the media. "It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one."
The segment that leaked online did not include any interviews with Trump officials or administration statements beyond a brief clip of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and another clip of President Donald Trump praising El Salvador's prison system.
'60 MINUTES' CECOT SEGMENT PULLED BY BARI WEISS AIRS IN CANADA, SPREADS ACROSS INTERNET
Axios reported that the White House, Department of Homeland Security and State Department all provided statements to CBS, but none of them were included in the story.
The White House statement called on "60 Minutes" to do more reporting on Angel Parents, whose children have been murdered by illegal immigrants.
CBS did not return Fox News Digital's prior requests for comment on the matter.
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Alfonsi also noted that the Department of Homeland Security declined an interview request and referred CECOT questions to the El Salvadoran government, which didn't respond to its request.
Fox News' Lindsay Kornick and David Rutz contributed to this report.
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