Transcript reveals Trump’s '60 Minutes' interview was heavily edited

On Sunday night, April 26, CBS News' "60 Minutes" aired an interview with U.S. President Donald Trump. The Hollywood Reporter's Carly Thomas, in an article published the following day, notes that the interview was heavily edited — but unlike an October 2024 interview with that year's Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, hasn't resulted in a lawsuit.

Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS because of the Harris interview, claiming that it was deceptively edited in a way designed to sway the election in Harris' favor. Many Trump critics considered the lawsuit frivolous, noting that television interviews are often edited; nonetheless, CBS' parent company, Paramount, agreed to a $16 million settlement.

Thomas reports, "It seems Donald Trump is OK with his '60 Minutes' interview getting edited, just not anyone else's. The president sat down with Norah O'Donnell for an interview that aired Sunday night on '60 Minutes,' one day after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents' dinner. During their conversation, he shared his perspective on what went down, but also, got defensive when O'Donnell read from the gunman's — 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen — alleged manifesto about his motivations."

On April 28, journalist Juliet Jeske, using her Decoding Fox News account on X, formerly Twitter, responded to the Hollywood Reporter's article and posted, "I went through the entire thing comparing the 40 minutes of footage to the 13 minute edit that aired. In many cases they cut Trump off mid-sentence and took a 4-minute answer an turned it to 20 seconds."

Atlanta News First's Brendan Keefe, responding to Jeske's tweet, pointed out that editing interviews for time is standard practice in television journalism.

Keefe said of CBS News, "They published the whole thing — transcript and 40 minutes of the interview — which is the only way we know what was cut out. Every news story is edited for time (I've been doing this for 36 years). @THR articles use quotes, not whole interviews."

Keefe linked to a CBS News transcript of the April 2026 interview. The transcript contains, in Q&A form, the entire interview — including the parts that aired on "60 Minutes" and the parts that were edited out.

On YouTube, CBS News posted the entire 40-minute interview as well as the edited 13-minute version. In the edited version, O'Donnell zeros right in on the White House Correspondents' dinner.

O'Donnell asked Trump, "Mr. President, do you know if you were the target of the gunman? — to which he responded, "I don't know. It sounded to me. I read a manifesto, which is — he's radicalized. He was a Christian — believer, and then he became an anti-Christian, and he had a lotta change. He's been goin' through a lot, based on what he wrote. His brother complained about him, and I think reported him to the police. And his sister, likewise, complained about him. His family — was very concerned. He was — probably a pretty sick guy."

Comparing the 40-minute and 13-minute versions on YouTube, one sees that Trump's answers are, as Jeske pointed out, more succinct and to the point.

In the transcript of the entire interview, O'Donnell brought up the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania before the 2024 Republican National Convention — while the edited version specifically focused on the White House Correspondents' dinner attack. And in the edited version, O'Donnell quickly moved to First Lady Melania Trump's response when the attack was occurring.

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