Steve Kroft Defends Fawning Interview of Obama and Clinton

They wouldn't come on 60 Minutes if they had to face real questions

CBS' News Steve Kroft appeared on Monday's broadcast of CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" to defend what some critics have described as a fawning interview with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday's "60 Minutes," and pushed back on allegations that he is the president's "favorite interviewer."

"First of all, I think he likes '60 Minutes,'" Kroft said. "It's — you know, we have a huge audience. We have a format that suits him. It's long. We can do 12 minutes or 24 minutes. We do — you know — a good job of editing. And I have been doing these interviews with him since a few weeks before he declared his candidacy.  So I covered him during the campaign and have kept doing it in the White House. But I think it's a question of fairness. We have not — I think he knows that we're not going to play gotcha with him. That we're not going to go out of our way to make him look bad or stupid, and we'll let him answer the questions."