President Trump’s frustrations with CBS News and its new owners are likely to deepen after it was reported that the Tiffany Network is re-signing a former national security adviser from his first term, retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster, whom the president   appears to hold in particularly low regard. 

On Wednesday, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that CBS News had inked deals to bring on several new contributors, including Gen. McMaster.

Mr. Byers noted that “most” CBS News contributors get $30,000 upfront and about $1,000 for every appearance. 

Mr. Byers did not seem to realize that Gen. McMaster has been a CBS News contributor since 2022 (he’s recently been seen on CBS News criticizing the Trump Administration’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean for a lack of transparency). Presumably, CBS News has re-upped Gen. McMaster.

The news of Gen. McMaster’s  staying power at CBS News comes as the once-hallowed news organization has faced renewed criticism from Mr. Trump, who has voiced frustration with what he called its biased coverage despite promises in writing from its new owner, David Ellison, that the network would produce fair journalism. 

Mr. Trump and Gen. McMaster had a tense relationship, according to multiple reports. The former national security adviser disagreed with Mr. Trump on a range of policy issues, such as climate change and immigration. 

Beyond policy differences, Gen. McMaster reportedly disliked many officials in the first Trump Administration and allegedly said that the president is a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner.”

Mr. Trump reportedly does not have the best view of Gen. McMaster. In the lead-up to Gen. McMaster’s departure, the president reportedly disliked his “gruff and condescending” manner.

Mr. Trump announced Gen. McMaster’s ouster by tweet in March 2018. 

In August 2024, during the presidential campaign, Gen. McMaster pubished an anti-Trump book entitled “At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House.” The book was a highly negative portrayal of Mr. Trump (This spring, White House Communications Director Steve Cheung told CBS News that the “third-rate book, which is now sold in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore, is filled with lies in a futile attempt to rehabilitate his tattered reputation.” 

The president still appears to have quite a low opinion of  Gen. McMaster. After the general was interviewed on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” — in which he expressed skepticism of the president’s efforts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — Mr. Trump posted on social media that he is a “weak and totally ineffective loser.”

CBS News reported that Mr. Trump became frustrated after he accidentally called Gen. McMaster in March 2025. When the president became aware he had been connected to his former aide, he reportedly asked, “Why the f*** would I talk to [Gen. McMaster]?” The network reported that Mr. Trump “launched into a scathing critique of his former aide.”

CBS News’ continued remuneration of Gen. McMaster seems unlikely to help improve Mr. Trump’s opinion of CBS News and its new management.

Before Mr. Ellison acquired CBS News, he promised the Trump Administration that he wanted to clean up the network’s liberal bias. He has taken several steps toward that goal, such as bringing on Bari Weiss as CBS News’s editor-in-chief and the former president of the right-leaning Hudson Institute, Kenneth Weinstein, to be the network’s ombudsman.

However, since the Skydance takeover, “60 Minutes” has continued to run anti-Trump stories. Earlier this month, the newsmagazine program interviewed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who used to be an ardent Trump supporter but has clashed with the president in recent months. 

After the interview with Ms. Greene aired, Mr. Trump fumed on Truth Social that the new owners of CBS News are “NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.”

On Wednesday evening, despite CBS preempting the season finale of its hit show “Survivor” to air his primetime address — the network declined to show the White House-produced graphics that officials wanted the networks to display with the speech — the president downplayed his connections with the Ellisons. 

“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. 

Mr. Ellison is trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, and is mounting a hostile takeover bid to block Netflix’s acquisition of WBD’s streaming and studio assets and pull off an ambitious acquisition. But when Mr. Trump was asked about the bidding war, he said that “none ​of them are particularly great friends ‍of ⁠mine.”

While the president has expressed his disappointment with CBS News’s new owners, the network found itself featured prominently on the White House’s “media offenders” list earlier this month. 

CBS News did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.