It seems Donald Trump is OK with his 60 Minutes interview getting edited, just not anyone else’s.
The president sat down with Norah O’Donnell for an interview that aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes, one day after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. During their conversation, he shared his perspective on what went down, but also got defensive when O’Donnell read from the gunman’s — 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen — alleged manifesto about his motivations.
The interview comes roughly a year and a half after Trump sued CBS in October 2024 over a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. At the time, he accused the network of deceptive editing to influence the election.
Though the president refused a 60 Minutes interview during his campaign, he criticized CBS for airing two different answers from Harris to a question that ran in separate clips on 60 Minutes and Face the Nation earlier in the day. In response, CBS said different portions of her answer to the same question were aired to be more succinct.
CBS parent company Paramount ultimately reached a $16 million settlement with Trump. Under the settlement, Paramount also agreed to release full transcripts of future interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after they air.
However, Trump may have forgotten that it would apply to him as well. The president’s latest interview on 60 Minutes was his second one on the show since his second term got underway (he previously spoke with O’Donnell in November).
Despite speaking with O’Donnell for 40 minutes on April 26, only 13 minutes of the interview aired on CBS. However, the extended version of the interview and the full transcript were posted on CBS’ website.
Some of Trump’s unaired remarks were about Democrats disagreeing with his policies, needing his White House State Ballroom finished for security purposes, blaming the internet for radicalizing some people, slamming No Kings protests, criticizing former President Joe Biden, reacting to conspiracy theories that the event was staged or didn’t happen and his plans to “hit people really hard with humor” in his White House Correspondents’ dinner speech, among other topics.
One of the parts that also didn’t make it to air was Trump’s comments on his CBS lawsuit, which came after he got defensive when O’Donnell asked some follow-up questions about the gunman’s motives. “I’ve also won a lot of money from fake news media, where they write falsely about me,” he said. “And not that I wanna sue people, ’cause I don’t. But I bring lawsuits against the fake news. I brought lawsuits against your network and you paid me $38 million (the settlement was reportedly worth $16 million) because you did something that was so horrible with Kamala.”
The president continued, “You put an answer down that wasn’t responsive to the question because her answer, her real answer, was so bad it was election-threatening. And you paid me a lotta money. And you tried to pull one off. It was terrible. It was a terrible thing that you did.”
Though Trump has been critical of CBS, he has also cultivated a close relationship with David Ellison, the current owner of CBS after his Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global last year. Ellison’s father and Oracle co-founder, Larry Ellison, is also an outspoken supporter of Trump.
