Trump Suggests Edits During Chat With ’60 Minutes,’ One Year After Suing Network for Rearranging Harris Interview

President Trump returned to “60 Minutes” for his first interview with the newsmagazine in five years — just one year after suing CBS News for $10 billion over edited footage from a sit-down with Vice President Kamala Harris. This time, he had no issue with trimming down the footage.“You don’t have to use that one,” Mr. Trump told interviewer Norah O’Donnell after stumbling through a question about crime at Washington, D.C.Later, while praising CBS’s new owners, he offered more editorial guidance: “You don’t have to put this on, because I don’t want to embarrass you.”Ms. O’Donnell, a CBS correspondent, sat down with Mr. Trump on Friday at Mar-a-Lago for a wide-ranging interview that touched upon the ongoing government shutdown, foreign policy, and some of his most controversial moves since retaking office in January. The contentious history between the president and the network merited only a brief mention.“And actually ’60 Minutes’ paid me a lot of money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t want to 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,” Mr. Trump said in reference to the new CBS News editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.Mr. Trump was pressed throughout the 90-minute interview by Ms. O’Donnell, who asked a wide array of questions including on the government shutdown and if America would go to war with Venezuela.“Now [with] the USS Gerald Ford, that is the world’s largest aircraft carrier, on the way to the Caribbean: Are we going to war against Venezuela?” she asked.“I doubt it. I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump responded. “But they’ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs — they’ve dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country that we didn’t want, people from prisons — they emptied their prisons into our [country].”In a follow-up Ms. O’Donnell asked if he felt that President Nicolas Maduro’s days as president would be numbered.“I would say yeah,” Mr. Trump said. “I think so, yeah.”The exchange then turned contentious when she asked of possible land strikes in the South American country.“I wouldn’t be inclined to say that I would do that,” he said. “Because I don’t talk to a reporter about whether or not I’m going to strike.”The Sunday night interview aired as the government shutdown closed in on the record for being the longest in history. Mr. Trump did not offer any ideas on how to break the impasse between both parties but said that plans to press Democrats to vote in favor of reopening.“I mean, the Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” he said. “You know, they’ve never had this. This has happened like 18 times before. The Democrats always voted for an extension, always saying, ‘Give us an extension, we’ll work it out.’”The president also brushed off questions about the controversies that have surrounded his current term, including the aggressive tactics used for immigration enforcement.Ms. O’Donnell asked Mr. Trump if ICE raids had gone “too far,” pointing to recent incidents in a Chicago neighborhood where officers deployed tear gas and smashed through car windows.“No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama,” he said.“You’re okay with those tactics?” Ms. O’Donnell asked in a follow-up question.“Yeah, because you have to get the people out.”

Trump Suggests Edits During Chat With ’60 Minutes,’ One Year After Suing Network for Rearranging Harris Interview

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