I just got through watching the 60 Minutes segment on “fake news,” which featured friend of the site Mike Cernovich. Many people expected him to get decimated in this piece since it was obviously designed to be a hit job from the get-go. The thing is, despite the biased framing by CBS and Scott Pelley, Mike came out looking very well. I’d have to say it was an overall victory, in fact.

Idiots like failed political operative Rick Wilson had predicted this would be the “death of kek,” which is as insane as it sounds. Over here on the reality-based plane, Cerno did an admirable job of turning the tables on Pelley, particularly when he got him to admit the mainstream media routinely took Hillary’s campaign at their word…

This was a stunning admission, as even Matt Pearce, national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, noted..

His last bit was particularly strong as well (full video here)…

Cernovich, for his part, claimed to be the victim of selective editing. Prior to the broadcast, Cernovich posted an excerpt of the interview to Danger & Play — some of which was aired, some of which was not. (The italicized portions below were not heard on the CBS broadcast.)

Cernovich: Do I really think that you guys are gonna tell the story that I would like to have told? No. Your story’s going to be here’s a guy, spreads fake news, uses social media, these social media people better … I know the story you guys are doing before you do it.

Pelley: What’s wrong with that story?

Cernovich: Because it is an agenda. The agenda is … The truth is you’ve talked to a person who sincerely believes true, you must also admit that there have been many stories reported by major outlets like The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Rolling Stone, that were false…

People get it wrong, so why then come guns blazing at me, and not guns blazing at everybody?Why isn’t this segment going to say, how did the New York Times get conned? How did the Washington Post believe that Russia had hacked the power grid? We all together, collectively need to discover what the truth is, and converse with one another what the truth is, that’s a different story.

Another story is, here is a person that is able to bypass traditional media outlets, reach people directly to tell a story. Maybe he’s a good guy, maybe he’s not. People decide.

This is another story, ’cause I know the story you guys are going to tell. Hillary Clinton’s perfectly healthy. This guy Cernovich that said she’s not, he has no reason to say that. Facebook and Twitter need to crackdown on this kind of stuff.

Pelley: What’s wrong with that story?

Cernovich: I just told you, because that is an agenda. You could tell a more whole picture. You could tell a full story, but that’s one narrow thing. ’Cause I know by the questions you’re asking, the story you’re going to tell.

I don’t see how this could be described as anything other than a win. Even though some of the above was left on the cutting room floor (for obvious reasons), much of it was intact and shown at the conclusion of the segment. That leaves the audience with Cernovich yet again getting the better of Pelley and 60 Minutes.

Overall, Cernovich landed far more blows than he took. The risk of going on the program in the first place seems to have paid off in spades. Now he’s able to rightly point out that he went into the lion’s den and landed some key blows. You’re never going to come off perfectly when going into hostile territory like this, and he had to know that going in. But I do think his performance ended up being a real victory for Mike and alternative media as a whole.