CBS News program “60 Minutes” was second-guessed by Monday morning quarterbacks over the heavily edited interview with President Trump the network ran Sunday night.
Journalist Norah O’Donnell sat down with the 47th president for nearly 74 minutes Friday to record an interview that ran for 28 minutes during primetime. Hoping to provide transparency, CBS posted a full transcript of the interview online, where an extended version of the discussion was also made available.
Still there was controversy over edits made by the network, including the decision to leave out the part of the interview the president recommended they cut. That segment dealt with a lawsuit that Paramount, the parent company of CBS, settled with the president after he complained about the way “60 Minutes” edited a 2024 interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran against him in last year’s presidential election.
Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to Trump’s legal team and presidential library to settle the grievance in July.
“Actually ’60 Minutes’ paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you,” Trump told O’Donnell Sunday.
The president then went on to praise CBS for recently hiring Free Press founder Bari Weiss to serve as the news division’s editor-in-chief. Weiss was brought to CBS after Skydance — where the president has allies — completed an $8 billion merger with Paramount.
“I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person,” he said before adding that in his opinion, CBS News is headed in the right direction.
Trump also groused about his predecessor Joe Biden more than 40 times during his interview, but viewers only heard the former president’s name mentioned 10 times. There were also moments in which the president rambled and made questionable claims that weren’t aired.
“Bulwark” host and former Republican strategist Tim Miller was one of many critics who saw irony in the way Trump viewed the edits of his interview and his previous issues with CBS.
“’60 Minutes’ did not air the part where Trump discusses his success in extorting the network and calls them Fake News. This edit is harmful to me and I’m considering suing,” Miller joked on social media.
Sen. Chuck Schumer pondered filing a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission using “the exact same language Trump lodged against Vice President Harris.”
Former “60 Minutes” producer Tom Bettag told The Associated Press the 56-year-old news magazine should just ask viewers to trust the version of the interview they put on TV rather than providing raw text to be scrutinized by all.
“I think there’s a very good reason not to allow people to do that, in order to avoid the arguments of ‘you should have done this’ or ‘you should have done that,’” Bettag said.
