It looks like “60 Minutes” cut something major from Anderson Cooper’s interview with Stormy Daniels — and that’s probably for the better.
Here’s why it seems likely that CBS made a serious edit.
Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was asked by Savannah Guthrie on the “Today” show Monday morning if he could speak to any information Daniels had shared with Cooper that may have been left “on the cutting room floor,” where he had suggested some details remained.
Avenatti said no, but proceeded to explain his client “was prepared to discuss intimate details relating to Mr. Trump.”
“She can describe his genitalia,” he claimed. “She can describe various conversations that they had that leave no doubt as to whether this woman is telling the truth.”
Compare that with what Cooper himself disclosed in a “60 Minutes Overtime” interview about the interview. “There are many, many tawdry details which we did not include in the story because it’s just, you know, that’s not our interest,” he revealed in the segment, which Avenatti himself shared on Twitter.
It seems likely, then, that Daniels provided a description of the president’s genitalia, graphic information about their alleged intercourse, or a combination of both.
In the broadcast, Cooper rightfully pressed Daniels to provide a specific account of her alleged rendezvous with Trump in July of 2006, asking follow-ups that pushed her to establish a timeline and get specific about their interactions.
With a convincing timeline and a consistent, specific story, Daniels can prove her credibility without describing the president’s penis or details about his sexual performance, which nobody would be able or willing to gauge the accuracy of in public anyway. CBS’s decision not to air the “many, many tawdry details” it left out seems to have been a wise act of journalistic restraint.
Given Avenatti’s decision on Monday to tease that his client is allegedly capable of recalling those explosive details, however, it seems plausible they may come out at some point anyway.
Lucky us.
