NBC News on Thursday trumpeted its upcoming “exclusive” interview with former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, as conducted by Sunday’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd.
Cheney will face questions about the CIA’s interrogation techniques and their effectiveness, as well as what the Bush White House knew about the details of the program at the time,” touts the networks press release. It notes that Cheney will be “live and in-studio” for the interview.
The only problem is that NBC’s “exclusive” is a warmed-over offering. Fox News’s Bret Baier already had that interview (also “live and in-studio”) Wednesday night. It lasted for nearly 15 minutes.
And it’s not as though Baier asked softball questions. He questioned whether a new congressional report is accurate in saying that former President George W. Bush was kept in the dark on extreme interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists. Baier also asked Cheney about gruesome specifics of those techniques — one such technique was called “anal rehydration” — and whether they constituted “torture.” Cheney responded that he didn’t “know anything about that specific instance.”
Sunday’s “Meet the Press” interview may still render some news value, though. The press release says Cheney will also be questioned on “the Middle East, immigration reform, and the race for 2016.”
