President Trump’s edited interview with CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” — a year after he sued the newsmagazine over its editing practices and extracted a multimillion-dollar payout — scored big ratings for the program.
According to preliminary Nielsen data, the Nov. 2 airing of “60 Minutes” featuring Trump’s interview drew 13.2 million viewers, Variety confirmed. The measurement firm’s fast nationals ratings are more reflective of live viewing and the final numbers are likely to change. But the early data indicates Trump pulled in a bigger-than-usual audience for the news program, which averaged 8.32 million viewers for the 2024-25 season, according to Nielsen data.
Trump was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell, CBS News senior correspondent and a contributor to “60 Minutes.” It was Trump’s first interview with “60 Minutes” in five years. During the interview, Trump boasted that “‘60 Minutes’ paid me a lotta money” to settle his lawsuit over its editing of an interview with then-VP Kamala Harris and he praised the takeover of Paramount by David Ellison’s Skydance Media — but those comments were edited out of the version that aired on CBS.
“‘60 Minutes’ paid me a lotta money,” Trump said. “You don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not – you have a great – I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great – from what I know.” Trump was referring to Bari Weiss, appointed as editor-in-chief of CBS News last month after Paramount Skydance bought her outlet The Free Press in a $150 million deal. About Weiss, Trump said, “I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person.”
Regarding the Ellison family’s acquisition of Paramount, parent of CBS, Trump said, “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 is friendly with Larry Ellison, the ultra-wealthy founder of Oracle. Last month, Trump said, “Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. They will make the right decisions. They’re going to revitalize CBS — hopefully, they’ll bring it back to its former glory.”
Trump told O’Donnell that “60 Minutes” was “forced to pay me a lot of money because they took [Harris’] answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
Trump’s claim that “60 Minutes” paid him is not technically correct. In fact, parent company Paramount Global agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit that alleged “60 Minutes” deceptively edited Harris’ responses in a way that somehow had damaged Trump and misled voters.
Responding to an FCC demand, CBS News released a full transcript of the Harris interview, which showed it had not altered the substance of her remarks. Legal experts said Paramount would easily have won in court, and initially Paramount and CBS News sought to have the case tossed. However, former Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone pushed the company to resolve the case out of court, which paved the way for the Trump administration’s approval of the Skydance Media $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global.
CBS News on Sunday released a transcript of the full 90-minute session with Trump and posted most of the rest of its on YouTube. About one-third of O’Donnell’s interview with Trump was aired on TV.
The interview covered a wide range topics, from international politics to ICE raids in the U.S. to the economy and healthcare police to the federal government shutdown. Much of the interview was devoted to O’Donnell’s questions about the president’s views on geopolitical hot spots and challenges the U.S. faces in dealing with Russia, China, Israel, Venezuela and other unpredictable situations. The interview was recorded Oct. 31 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Fla.
O’Donnell questioned Trump about the conflict of interest involved in his role as U.S. president and his family investments in crypto and the marketing of Trump-branded crypto currencies. Trump was dismissive in his reply: “I can’t say, because — I can’t say — I’m not concerned. I don’t — I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, ‘Can I ask another question?’ And I said, yeah. This is the question–.” At which point O’Donnell interjected, “And you answered–” before Trump continued, “I don’t mind. Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn’t have to answer this question. I’m proud to answer the question.”
Trump said, “We’re number one in crypto in the whole world. Other people wanna be. They’re fighting like hell to be. But we’re number one in crypto because I’m the president. Biden wanted to also, at the very end, you know, he totally switched his thing.”
O’Donnell also asked Trump about his pardon of “crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as CZ.” She was referring to former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to U.S. government charge of failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program on the crypto exchange. Zhao was sentenced to four months in jail and released in September 2024.
Trump responded, “Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt. And what I wanna do is see crypto, ’cause if we don’t do it it’s gonna go to China, it’s gonna go to — this is no different to me than AI.”