60 Minutes didn’t shy away from the bipartisan criticism of its interview with President Donald Trump.
The iconic CBS newsmagazine show said it received “hundreds of notes” about the wide-ranging half-hour sitdown between Trump and star anchor Norah O’Donnell, which aired last week.
“The country may be politically divided, but the criticism we got from viewers was bipartisan,” Cecilia Vega said on Sunday.
Viewers on one side slammed 60 Minutes for what they viewed as a combative approach to the president.
“Instead of interviewing him, it appeared as an attack,” one viewer wrote.
“You should have more respect than what you showed,” another added.
The criticism echoed an earlier MAGA meltdown over O’Donnell’s use of “Mr. Trump” rather than “President Trump” in the intro to the episode, which many conservatives took as a sign of disrespect.
While O’Donnell indeed referred to him as “Mr. Trump” at one point in her opening spiel, that reference only came after she had already said “President Trump.”
Viewers across the aisle, meanwhile, found O’Donnell to be too deferential to the president.
“You wanted to show Trump in the best possible light,” one person said.
“There were no hard questions, no meaningful pushback,” another viewer wrote.
The show drew flak after a full transcript of the interview revealed that 60 Minutes cut out a portion where Trump had a combative back-and-forth with O’Donnell over his pardon of a crypto billionaire, as well as another instance where the president bragged about how he got Paramount, the network’s parent company, to pay him “a lotta money” to settle a lawsuit over a 2024 interview with Kamala Harris.
Conservative pundits appeared to agree with the second camp of viewers, but not for the same reasons.
In an appearance on Fox News last week, British journalist Piers Morgan said the interview unexpectedly made for some good TV.
“Not only was it enjoyable to watch—unusual for a Trump mainstream media encounter, normally very acrimonious, very adversarial—I thought it was mutually robust, but also it had a civil tone to it. I thought everyone was the winner from that interview. That’s how presidential interviews ought to be conducted,” he said.
Other 60 Minutes fans decided to take matters into their own hands.
“Donald Trump gets lots and lots of time on TV as president. He has power, and so do I,” one viewer said. “When I saw that he was being interviewed on last Sunday’s show, I used my power and turned it off immediately.”
