Some burial traditions include mourners shoveling dirt into the open grave of the deceased, both as a benediction and a sign of emotional closure. When media historians document the demise of 60 Minutes, Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Donald Trump on November 2, 2025, will be identified as the moment when mourners shoveled earth laden with equal parts sorrow, disgrace, and surrender into the grave of a once proud institution.
CBS News has been taken over by Trump acolyte Bari Weiss, who used Substack to create a media empire that vaulted her into the position of chief propagandist for Trump oligarchs Larry and David Ellison. Ellison’s Skydance simultaneously purchased Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and Paramount, the parent of CBS.
Ellison quickly installed Bari Weiss as the censor and “news-minder” for the (allegedly) overly liberal CBS News—and tasked her with making the network more “Trump-friendly.” See MSNBC, Bari Weiss brings her Trump-friendly sensibilities to CBS News | “Paramount Skydance hired the anti-woke opinion journalist to run the venerable news organization — giving Trump an ally with a big legacy media platform.”
In short order, Weiss has hollowed out the news operation at CBS and implemented a series of programming moves that betray Weiss’s lack of experience in news reporting, as opposed to opinion and commentary. See The Wrap, CBS News Layoffs Underway as the David Ellison-Bari Weiss Era Takes Shape.
Two months into her takeover of CBS News, Weiss arranged a friendly interview with Donald Trump, a president who attempted a coup, pardoned the insurrectionists who stormed Congress in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and is an adjudicated sexual abuser who recently destroyed one-third of the White House complex without pulling a building permit.
More importantly, Trump is assaulting the Constitution every day of his second term by, among other things,
Withholding congressionally appropriated funds in violation of Article I, Sec. 9 of the Constitution and Impoundment Control Act;
Ordering the US military to kill civilians in international waters without due process or trial for criminal violations that do not carry the death penalty;
Deploying the National Guard to patrol US cities in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act;
Imposing tariffs in violation of Congress’s authority under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution;
Directing the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute his political opponents; and
Ordering the Speaker of the House to suspend the operation of Congress by holding the House in indefinite recess to prevent the disclosure of materials that might implicate Trump in the sex trafficking operation run by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
There is more, of course, but each of the above topics is cause for impeachment, conviction, and removal. And any self-respecting journalist with the opportunity to interview the president would surely confront him about the fact that his actions violate the Constitution daily.
But not Norah O’Donnell in the new “60 Minutes as People Magazine for Trump” format.
I don’t mean to pick on O’Donnell in particular—except for her decision to conduct the interview knowing that she would not be allowed to ask hard questions. She should have refused the assignment and / or quit CBS News rather than allow the defining moment of her career to be platforming Trump's assault on the Constitution.
To be fair to O’Donnell, she did touch on some of the topics above, asking, for example:
What happens to your economic plan if the Supreme Court invalidates your tariffs?
Are we going to war against Venezuela?
You said, “If we need more than the National Guard [in US cities], we’ll send more than the National Guard.” What does that mean, send more than the National Guard?
The full transcript of the interview is here: Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here. - CBS News.
While O’Donnell touched on the topics, she did not confront Trump about his violations of the Constitution in each of those areas—tariffs, withholding funds, killing civilians, violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, persecution of his political enemies, and shuttering Congress.
The interview was like sitting down with a person accused of a crime who agreed to answer your questions, and then failing to ask if the person committed the crime that was the subject of the interview.
Why does this matter? Does critiquing the media make a difference? Yes, and no.
It is worth noting that the “time of death” for 60 Minutes was Norah O’Donnell’s interview of Trump. CBS can no longer be viewed as a reliable source of news. It is part of the Trump Propaganda Complex.
It is also worth criticizing those who allow themselves to be manipulated and exploited by Trump rather than standing on principle. Perhaps the next 60 Minutes interviewer will see how Norah O’Donnell allowed herself to be used for Trump’s aims and refuse to cooperate.
Finally, the inexplicable complacency and complicity of leaders in the media, business, and politics in normalizing Trump make our task of defending democracy more difficult. Many of society’s “elites” have abandoned us. If not explicitly, then tacitly—by speaking “off the record,” by their silence, or by their accommodation and normalization of Trump.
The abandonment of the grassroots movement by the elites is a strong undercurrent that is slowing the resistance. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo addresses this dynamic in his essay, Fear, Greed, Civic Virtue and the Fall of the Elites.
Marshall writes, in part,
Every leader in society — whether it’s business or government or the arts or anything in between — has this obligation [to publicly oppose Trump]. In a perverse and ironic way, Trump’s very argument about the corruption of the American elite is most vividly and visibly confirmed in the way he has so easily plowed through [the elites in society].
To the extent the American Republic is still in the game, taking punches but still in the ring, it’s large numbers of fairly ordinary people, without any great amount of power on their own who are doing it. You see that in ground level organizing, in turnout at town halls or No Kings demonstrations.
So, the critique of 60 Minutes’ interview with Trump isn’t about the interview per se, but about CBS abandoning the defense of democracy by normalizing and platforming Trump’s lies. 60 Minutes has become part of the problem, an ignominious end for an institution that once led the way in holding the powerful to account.
Even in the heavily edited interview, Trump’s ignorance and ambition could not be concealed. See Aaron Parnas on Substack, The Parnas Perspective, Important Sunday Night News Update. Parnas highlights two exchanges (among others):
O’Donnell: Why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?
Trump: Are you ready? I don’t know who he is.
O’Donnell: His crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned him.
Trump Here’s the thing. I know nothing about it.
And then Trump declined to say that he would not run for a third term:
O’Donnell: Can you set the record straight? You’re not planning to run for a third term?
Trump: I don’t even think about it. I’ll tell you this — a lot of people want me to run.
Each of these moments deserved serious follow-up. Instead, viewers were left with silence. No correction. No fact-check. No accountability.
Rest in peace, 60 Minutes. You had a good run, while it lasted. But it ended “Not with a bang, but a whimper.”
[Robert B. Hubbell newsletter]
