'Dear Leader shall not be fact checked': Trump mocked after backing out of '60 Minutes'

Former President Donald Trump's surprising decision to drop out of a "60 Minutes" interview that entailed live fact-checking stunned political onlookers who said he just handed an easy victory to Vice President Kamala Harris.

The iconic news show's Tuesday announcement that Trump had pulled out of the special Oct. 7 broadcast alongside Harris spurred outrage from his campaign spokesperson and jeers from the left.

"Fake News," declared Steven Cheung. "Nothing was ever scheduled or locked in. They also insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented."

This spurred a sarcastic reply from national security attorney Bradley Moss.

"Dear Leader shall not be fact checked," Moss quipped. "The man lives for media attention. The negotiations must have gone really badly."

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Eric Schultz, a spokesman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and onetime adviser to former President Barack Obama, also took umbrage with Cheung's scornful response to checking the facts.

"A window into how Trump operation bullies the press," Schultz wrote. " And what their red line is: 'They also insisted on doing live fact checking.'"

MSNBC and Bulwark commentator Sam Stein expressed open shock at Trump's decision and predicted his political foes would be quick to capitalize on the less-than-optimal optics.

"Trump not agreeing to 60 Minutes is actually genuinely surprising," Stein wrote. "But between this and the decision not to debate, he's giving fodder to critics, or at least watering down their attacks on Harris."

This prediction was almost immediately proven true by critics such as "Mueller, She Wrote" podcast host Allison Gill, who urged mainstream media to focus its reporting on the reason she suggested Trump reneged.

"So Donald has backed out of the third debate, and now he’s backing out of the 60 minutes interview," Gill wrote. "I’m gonna need wall to wall coverage on his fitness for the next three weeks from the corporate media."

David Plouffe, a senior adviser for the Harris campaign, had another theory as to why the former president and Republican presidential nominee declined to join "60 Minutes."

"Afraid of the debate stage. Afraid of 60minutes," Plouffe wrote. "And his campaign team - after the last three days of increasingly unhinged and unstable ranting at his rallies - is clearly afraid of exposing him beyond comfortable confines."

Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America, agreed, writing on X, "Trump’s campaign clearly believes that the less people see of Trump, the better."