President Trump did a long interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that aired on “60 Minutes” last night. And one gets the impression that O’Donnell wanted to be very salty about it.

For those who remember, Norah O’Donnell was a very bad moderator for the vice presidential debate last year, and she definitely does not like President Trump. But, O’Donnell is apparently on Bari Weiss’s good side, for now, and looks like she is trying to pretend that she could be impartial. This interview was likely a test for her, and it is an open question if she passed or not.

“60 Minutes” aired a version of the interview that lasted about 28 and a half minutes on Sunday night. They then released more of the interview under their “Overtime” label on YouTube, which can be seen here. It’s an hour and 13 minutes long.

In total, the president spent about 90 minutes in this interview. Yes, we all know that any interview like this has to be trimmed down and edited for broadcast purposes. But it also makes the editing of the Kamala Harris interview – which Norah O’Donnell admits (with a strained voice) at the beginning of the broadcast interview that Paramount Skydance, which now owns CBS News, settled a lawsuit with the president over, but is quick to point out that there was no apology involved – that much more blatantly obvious. But we will leave that aside, and look at the content of the interview itself.

The extended interview begins with questions about China, since O’Donnell interviewed President Trump right after he returned from his visit to Asia, where he met with Xi Jinping. The interview talked about the rare-earth minerals deals that Trump struck while on his trip, the trade “truce” with China, how the president does not want China getting its hands on advanced semiconductors, nuclear testing, and Taiwan. O’Donnell really tried pushing Trump about Taiwan, and that led to this exchange.

NORAH O’DONNELL: One potential flash point with China, probably the potential flash point with China in the coming years, is over the issue of Taiwan. The Chinese military is encroaching on Taiwan’s sea lanes, its airspace, its cyberspace. I know you have said that Xi Jinping wouldn’t dare move militarily on Taiwan while you’re in office. But what if he does? Would you order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You’ll find out if it happens. And he understands the answer to that.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Why not say it–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This never even came up yesterday, as a subject. He never brought it up. People were a little surprised at that. He never brought it up, because he understands it, and he understands it very well. Taiwan is a very interesting case. It’s 69 miles away from China. We’re 9,500 miles away. But that doesn’t matter. He understands– what will happen. He and I have spoken about it. But it was never even brought up during a two and a ha– or two-and-a-half-hour meeting we had yesterday.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Do you mind if I ask, when you say, “He understands,” why not communicate that publicly to the rest of us? What does he understand that–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –I don’t want to give away– I can’t give away my secrets. I don’t want to be one of these guys that tells you exactly what’s gonna happen if something happens. The other side knows, but– I’m not somebody that tells you everything because you’re askin’ me a question. But they understand what’s gonna happen. And– he has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, “We would never do anything while President Trump is president,” because they know the consequences.

CBS even played this clip on their morning show, and Norah O’Donnell got roundly mocked for asking Trump the question in the first place.

Does CBS honestly think he’ll give away top secret information?!

I mean are they really that stupid

— KᗴᒪᒪᗴY ✰ (@Patriotmom717) November 2, 2025

O’Donnell had some good moments where she asked pointed questions, and she had some questions that were just dumb. One good question was when she pointedly asked Trump about a pardon that he just gave. Considering all the complaining about Joe Biden’s mass pardons, Trump’s answer here is, frankly, unacceptable. If you are president and wielding the pardon pen, you had better know who the hell you ARE pardoning.

NORAH O’DONNELL: This is a question about pardons. The Trump family is now perhaps more associated with cryptocurrency than real estate. You and your son– your sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have formed World Liberty Financial with the Witkoff family.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Helping to make your family millions of dollars. It’s in that context that I do wanna ask you about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z. He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security”, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 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.

My sons are involved in crypto much more than I– me. I– I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.

But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it.

I said, “Eh, it may look bad if I do it. I have to do the right thing.” I don’t know the man at all. I don’t think I ever met him. Maybe I did. Or, you know, somebody shook my hand or something. But I don’t think I ever met him. I have no idea who he is. I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.

Good question by O’Donnell, bad answer from Trump. Now here is the reverse, regarding the shutdown. Trump correctly puts the blame where it belongs – on the Democrats, pointing out that they just need a handful of them to cross the aisle in the Senate to vote for cloture on the continuing resolution. O’Donnell, however, just keeps asking him why he won’t just give the Democrats what they want.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Mr. President, we’ve talked about foreign policy, now let’s focus on issues here at home–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, sure.

NORAH O’DONNELL: –some of that you have already mentioned. We are now approaching the longest shutdown in American history.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Democrats’ fault.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Under your presidency, we’re talking about more than a million federal workers who are not getting a paycheck, including our air traffic controllers. You see there’s traffic snarls out at the airports now. This weekend food aid for more than 42 million Americans is set to expire. What are you doing as president to end the shutdown?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, what we’re doing is we keep voting. I mean, the Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it. 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.”

They don’t wanna give us an extension because they used to think it was good for him, but the polls are turning around because– not turning around. I just saw a poll where they’re down 20-25%. What’s happening is the people understand they’re losing so much, they call it Trump derangement syndrome. They are losing so much that they don’t know what to do. They’ve lost their way. They’ve become crazed lunatics. And all they have to do, Norah, is say, “Let’s vote.” And you can open the– the economy could open up during our interview–

NORAH O’DONNELL: Is there something you can do, though–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Maybe it did.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Is there something you can do–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: All I can do–

NORAH O’DONNELL: –to bring this to an end?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –is give the facts. Here’s what I can’t do. I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally. So that prisoners, and that people from mental institutions, and people that are drug dealers get vast amounts of money for healthcare. That I can’t do–

NORAH O’DONNELL: So my under–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: What I can do is I can continue to run a great country. We have the best economy we’ve ever had. I can continue to do that. What they should do– look, this started a long time ago. I always said– and you know I’ve been very consistent– Obamacare is terrible.

It’s bad healthcare at far too high a price. We should fix that. We should fix it. And we can fix it with the Democrats. All they have to do is let the country open and we’ll fix it. But, you know, people are gonna get an 18-19% increase in Obamacare. It was a faulty program, it should’ve never been approved. But it was approved.

Trump also corrects O’Donnell when she brings up the New York City mayoral race, and calls Zohran Mamdani a “communist.”

NORAH O’DONNELL: We are about– we’re on the eve a number of big state and local elections. One of the most watched is the one for Mayor of New York City.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

NORAH O’DONNELL:. . . he is, Zohran Mamdani, 34-year-old Democratic Socialist. He’s the front runner–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Communist, not Socialist. Communist. He’s far–

NORAH O’DONNELL: Some–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –he’s far worse than a Socialist.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Some people have compared him to a left-wing version of you, charismatic, breaking the old rules. What do you think about that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think I’m a much better looking person than him, right?

That response was a gut-buster. President Trump truly possesses a fantastic sense of humor. But then he summed up the difference between Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo quite succinctly.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What if Mamdani becomes mayor?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think he’s probably gonna make de Blasio look great. I think he will make de Blasio look like one of our great mayors. De Blasio was the worst mayor we’ve ever had. Now I saw that, you know, but I was sort of leaving during that period of time.

I got to see de Blasio, how bad a mayor he was, and this man will do a worse job than de Blasio by far. And it’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York. Because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there. So I don’t know that he’s won, and I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other, but if it’s gonna be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.

The interview is much, much longer than just these questions, and O’Donnell had to struggle to keep up with Trump (and get him back on track when she wanted to ask a follow-up question). She probably wasn’t happy about having to spend that much time with the president, and her snotty annoyance leaked through more than once. Still, the interview was better than one would expect out of “60 Minutes,” and just maybe the network is not doomed after all if Bari Weiss can keep these “journalists” in line.

Featured image: President Donald Trump on September 23, 2025, official White House Photo by Daniel Torok, cropped, public domain