60 Minutes shared some of the “hundreds of notes” it received in the wake of its recent interview with Donald Trump, revealing that both Democrats and Republicans were enraged over the president’s sitdown with the seminal CBS newsmagazine.
“The country may be politically divided, but the criticism from viewers was bipartisan,” CBS News’ Cecilia Vega declared.
The messages that Vega shared at the end of Sunday night’s broadcast included complaints from conservatives that the show was disrespectful to Trump and treated him unfairly, while liberals grumbled that 60 Minutes wanted to show the president “in the best possible light” by giving him softball questions.
“Donald Trump gets lots and lots of time on TV as president. He has power, and so do I,” one viewer pointedly wrote. “When I saw that he was being interviewed on last Sunday’s show, I used my power and turned it off immediately.”
Exactly a year after he filed a “meritless” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which CBS News’ parent company Paramount settled just weeks before its merger with Skydance Media was approved by the Trump administration, Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for a lengthy one-on-one.
Though the president and O’Donnell spoke for roughly 90 minutes, only 28 minutes of the interview aired on 60 Minutes. An edited 73-minute version of the conversation was dropped on the network’s YouTube channel, and an unedited transcript of the entire interview was published online.
Part of the agreement CBS reached with the president in the settlement was that the network would publish the unedited transcripts of any interviews with presidents and presidential candidates. Therefore, in an ironic twist, 60 Minutes soon found itself under fire from viewers over portions of the interview that were not aired on the program.
In one exchange that was left on the cutting room floor, the president gushed over new CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss and Paramount chief executive David Ellison, all while boasting that CBS News was forced to pay him “a lotta money” to settle his lawsuit. While 60 Minutes did not air that portion, O’Donnell did reference the settlement at the top of the broadcast, noting that the network didn’t apologize as part of the agreement.
“I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press,” Trump said of the new leadership at the network, adding that Weiss – who founded the anti-woke digital outlet The Free Press – is a “great person” and leader. Ellison, whose father is megabillionaire and close Trump ally Larry Ellison, has repeatedly been praised by the president.
Also missing from both the televised edit and the extended online version of the interview was a combative back-and-forth between Trump and O’Donnell over the president’s pardon of crypto entrepreneur Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who recently struck a multi-billion-dollar crypto deal with the Trump family. While some of the exchange was aired, only the online transcript revealed that the president became aggravated and even suggested he could walk out of the interview.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t just Trump critics and liberals who found fault with the 60 Minutes interview. O’Donnell faced MAGA anger for referring to the president as “Mr. Trump” during their conversation, prompting some conservatives to grouse online that she was disrespecting the office. This played out in the letters Vega read aloud on Sunday night.
“Instead of interviewing him, it appeared as an attack,” one viewer griped, while another wrote: “You should have more respect than what you showed.”
On the flip side, liberal viewers criticized the show for going too easy on the president and not taking him to task more fully during the interview. They also seemed to hint at the growing concern among critics and CBS News staffers that Ellison is pushing the network to the right in order to curry favor with Trump.
“You wanted to show Trump in the best possible light,” one commenter noted. “There were no hard questions, no meaningful pushback,” another viewer added.
One person, meanwhile, took issue with 60 Minutes even giving Trump airtime, claiming that the president already has enough media exposure, bluntly stating that once they saw Trump was on last Sunday’s broadcast, “I used my power and turned it off immediately.”
Trump’s appearance on 60 Minutes gave the already top-rated program a massive ratings boost, drawing 14 million viewers and posting its highest viewership since January 2021.
