An edit to a CBS “Evening News” broadcast that cut out Bill Clinton saying that his wife “frequently” suffers bouts of extreme dehydration was done for timing reasons, a spokesman for the network told the Washington Examiner.
“The clip in question from former President Clinton’s interview with Charlie Rose ran in its entirety on CBS ‘This Morning,’ CBSNews.com and on CBSN, CBS News’ 24/7 digital streaming news service,” said Richard Huff, the network’s communications executive director. “One clip that ran on CBS ‘Evening News’ was edited purely for time while on deadline for the live broadcast.”
The edit was made to an interview with Bill Clinton that aired Monday night. In the interview, Charlie Rose asked if Hillary Clinton’s recent health scare indicated something “more serious” than dehydration. The former president said, “Frequently — well, not frequently — rarely, but on more than one occasion over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her where she got severely dehydrated.”
The portion of his answer where he said “frequently” was edited out of the CBS “Evening News” broadcast, but the same interview was played the next day on CBS’s “This Morning” and it was left in.
Critics who noticed the edit were skeptical that the cut was made for time reasons, given that it was a difference of about three seconds. Huff declined to address whether the timing made an substantive difference.
Clinton’s comment on his wife’s health come after the Democratic nominee fell ill this weekend and seen nearly collapsing on Sunday at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York.
