President Trump appeared on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, one year after suing the CBS show over the editing of a Kamala Harris interview — and he was well aware that his answers would similarly be trimmed for time.
“You don’t have to use that one,” Trump remarked after an awkward exchange with interviewer Norah O’Donnell about crime in Washington, D.C.
“You don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you,” Trump said at another point while praising the new owners of CBS.
The newsmagazine’s producers evidently agreed that those moments weren’t the most newsworthy. CBS News aired about a third of O’Donnell’s sit-down with Trump on TV, and posted most of the rest on YouTube. The network also published the complete transcript of the 90-minute interview online.
Both the TV broadcast and the transcript showed that O’Donnell sought to make the most of her time with Trump, pressing him on cost-of-living increases, foreign policy challenges, the government shutdown and other topics.
O’Donnell asked pointed questions: “Are we going to war against Venezuela?” “When will you declare ‘mission accomplished’ on immigration?” “So you’re gonna send the military into American cities?”
During a couple of key moments, O’Donnell pushed back on Trump’s talking points, for example, noting how “when the stock market is doing well, that doesn’t affect everybody.”
Liberal commentators criticized O’Donnell for not interjecting and correcting Trump more often — reprising a decade-old debate within media industry circles about how to interview Trump.
“Norah let Trump lie and lie with barely any pushback or provision of corrective facts,” former MSNBC host Joy Reid commented on Bluesky.
But it was not exactly a cushy interview. And O’Donnell’s questions generated lots of news. In one clip that ricocheted around social media, Trump said immigration raids in the US “haven’t gone far enough.” In another viral clip, Trump said, “I don’t know who he is” when asked about Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whom he pardoned last month.
Trump seemingly had little to say when O’Donnell brought up “those that are suffering with cost-of-living increases and saying they’re living paycheck to paycheck.” He suggested people should blame his predecessor, Joe Biden, and made generic pledges about lowering the price of gas and fixing healthcare.
“But Mr. President, with all due respect, you’ve been talking about fixing the healthcare insurance plan since 2015,” O’Donnell said at one point.
“Sure. And you can’t do it because of the Democrats,” Trump responded.
Praising David Ellison and Bari Weiss
Sit-down interviews with Trump have been few and far between during his second term, so every question and every answer gets attention.
And Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview was even more noteworthy since Trump cares deeply about the newsmagazine but hadn’t said yes to an interview since 2020.
Trump fielded O’Donnell’s questions on Friday, one year to the day after he filed a frivolous lawsuit against “60 Minutes” over its pre-election interview with Harris.
The lawsuit — along with Trump’s public attacks and threats against CBS station licenses — shook the network and created a conundrum for parent company Paramount, which needed the Trump administration’s approval for its then-pending merger with Skydance Media.
The Paramount board decided to strike a settlement deal, paying $16 million to Trump’s future presidential library to end the litigation.
The settlement was widely criticized, including by journalists and entertainers at CBS. “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert likened it to a “big fat bribe.” (Colbert’s show was cancelled soon thereafter, in what the network cast as a financial, not political, decision.)
Within days of the settlement being finalized last July, the Trump administration approved Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media, clearing the way for Skydance boss David Ellison, son of the Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, to take control of CBS.
Trump has kept tabs on the Paramount ownership change and has expressed hope that CBS will be “fairer” as a result.
“Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine,” Trump said last month. “They will make the right decisions,” he added. “They’re going to revitalize CBS — hopefully, they’ll bring it back to its former glory.”
Trump also flattered the Ellisons during the “60 Minutes” taping, saying, “I see good things happening in the news. I really do. And I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”
Trump specifically brought up David Ellison’s recent hiring of Bari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief, albeit not by name.
“The young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great — from what I know. I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person,” Trump said after bringing up the Paramount settlement. (This is one of the parts of the interview that Trump suggested could be trimmed.)
Trump falsely said “60 Minutes” was “forced to pay me a lot of money,” when in fact the settlement was a corporate calculation; CBS could have decided to fight the lawsuit in court, and many legal experts believed the network would have won.
Trump also misstated the timeline, claiming the Harris interview “was election-changing, two nights before the election,” when in fact it aired one month before election day.
CBS disclosed the settlement controversy in O’Donnell’s introduction to the interview broadcast on Sunday night. She noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing.”
