Donald Trump’s niece has offered her read on why the president erupted at a 60 Minutes anchor during an interview about the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The 79-year-old president reacted angrily when Norah O’Donnell read excerpts from the suspected gunman Cole Tomas Allen’s manifesto during Sunday’s interview on CBS News’ flagship news program, including Allen’s alleged rationalization that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
“Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” Trump hissed at O’Donnell.
The president, who has made a habit of insulting female journalists, went on to tell the longtime correspondent that she “should be ashamed” for reading that portion of the manifesto.
“You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes,” he said. “You’re a disgrace.”
Mary Trump, Trump’s 60-year-old niece, suggested in a video on X that the president was particularly incensed by the uncomfortable line of questioning because he had chosen to appear on a network owned by one of his allies, Paramount Skydance’s David Ellison.
“‘You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes because my friends own CBS, and you’re not allowed to confront me with any relevant information that makes me look bad, even if it wasn’t necessarily about me,’” Mary said, channeling her uncle’s purported inner dialogue.
The White House and CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president was initially pleased when Ellison and his father, Oracle CEO and GOP megadonor Larry Ellison, took over CBS in an $8.4 billion merger last October and installed anti-woke opinion columnist Bari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief.
“Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine,” Trump told reporters at the time. “And they’ll do the right thing.”
“CBS has great potential,” he added.
But since his early excitement about the new owners, he has complained that 60 Minutes has treated him unfairly.
“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called “takeover,” than they have ever treated me before,” Trump fumed on Truth Social in December, after the program interviewed defector Marjorie Taylor Greene after she announced her resignation from Congress.
“If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” he added.
But the president may have come away with a new impression that the network is moving toward a friendlier tilt in his direction after the younger Ellison hosted a dinner to “honor” him last week.
Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor-in-chief, was seated at Trump’s table alongside her wife, journalist Nellie Bowles, according to The New York Times. Curiously, O’Donnell also attended.
The event was held at the U.S. Institute of Peace—rebranded as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace by the president himself.
