Did Donald Trump use 60 Minutes as a source for the debate?
Donald Trump regularly attacks news reports as untrustworthy, but some viewers are convinced he relied on 60 Minutes Sunday night in order to prepare for the debate Monday night. The candidate appeared to cite something he’d seen on the broadcast about America’s nuclear program.
The viewers are referring to a series of exchanges from one Russia-fueled debate moment. After Secretary Clinton commented that Donald Trump finds Russian leader Vladimir Putin “praiseworthy,” Trump qualified his praise of Putin’s leadership by comparing the state of Russian and U.S nuclear programs, the subject of a 60 Minutes report Sunday night.
“Russia has been expanding their — they have a much newer capability than we do. We have not been updating from the new standpoint,” Trump said. “I looked the other night. I was seeing B-52s, they’re old enough that your father, your grandfather could be flying them. We are not keeping up with other countries.”
The particular segment, “The New Cold War,” opens with video of one of the B-52 bombers in America’s nuclear arsenal.
If the Republican candidate was watching 60 Minutes’ 49th season premiere Sunday night, he also may have seen an interview with the King of Jordan – a leader who got some glowing reviews from viewers unimpressed with both Trump and Clinton:
And then there was this wistful tweet during the debate:
Rooney’s take? Perhaps it would have sounded like something he said on the broadcast during the 2004 presidential election: “I think that people who can’t decide which one of these two ought to be president even before they watched the debates, aren’t undecided. They’re stupid. I think you’ll all agree with me on that.”