• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 5 hours ago

Donald Trump sued “60 Minutes” a year ago for a tiny edit in a Kamala Harris interview, but there he was being interviewed on the very same show Sunday night.

The segment took up 28 minutes of the one-hour show, but the interview itself reportedly ran to 90 minutes in length. 

The interview was conducted by CBS’s Norah O’Donnell on Halloween at Trump’s Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago. 

Of the 90 minutes, a total of 73 minutes of video was subsequently made available online by CBS News, along with a full transcript of the entire 90-minute interview that was also posted.

Unfortunately, that enabled critics to compare the 90-minute transcript with the 73-minute “extended” video to find portions that CBS omitted.

As a result, CBS News was once again raked over the coals for the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview. 

One of the subjects that critics said was missing from the 73-minute video was a portion in which Trump mentioned that CBS had paid him $16 million to settle his lawsuit against “60 Minutes,” and praised the new owners of CBS -- Skydance Media -- and Bari Weiss, the right-leaning outsider who Skydance CEO David Ellison hired as CBS News editor-in-chief. 

“I think you have a great new leader, frankly,” Trump said, an apparent reference to Weiss, whose name he could not remember.

The President said it in a portion of the interview transcript in which he rambled through a string of comments about prominent Democrats such as Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett (“a very low-IQ person”) and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“a crazy person”) after earlier labeling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “a basket case.”

He then suddenly segued into a commentary about “60 Minutes” and the settlement under which Paramount paid him $16 million to settle his lawsuit, which previously had asked for $20 billion.

“And actually ‘60 Minutes’ paid me a lotta money,” Trump said. “And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not -- you have a great -- I think you have a great, new leader, frankly. I don't know her, but I hear she's a great person.”

“I see good things happening in the news. I really do,” Trump said. “And I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”

Watching O’Donnell interview Trump (I watched the 28-minute version that aired), it dawned on me that sitting with Donald Trump for a 90-minute interview must be exhausting.

To her credit, O’Donnell cycled through a number of important subjects, the great majority of them making it into the broadcast version, including the government shutdown and the Trump administration’s “lawfare” campaign against three of his perceived enemies (New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security advisor John Bolton).

Also discussed were the severity of ICE raids, Trump’s military campaign against alleged South American drug traffickers, Trump’s tariff wars, the use of the National Guard to fight crime in major cities, Putin, Xi, Hamas, and Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao, founder of the cryptocurrency company Binance.

The pardon of “CZ,” as Zhao is known, is especially controversial because of the money members of Trump’s family are earning from investments in crypto. Although Trump pardoned him, he inexplicably said he never heard of him. 

Rundowns of all the mistakes, mischaracterizations and lies Trump uttered on “60 Minutes” on a number of the subjects listed above are plentiful online.

But the thing about Trump that never ceases to amaze is how his answers just come spilling out of him, and he never seems to have a care in the world whether they are accurate or not.

Very generally speaking, his answers fall into three categories -- name-calling, accusations that the news media is persecuting him and optimistic statements about tariff deals, crime-fighting and a dozen other things he takes full credit for.

Norah O’Donnell never asked the President whether he is a Nazi, but he still felt the need to say he was not one. 

“Look, they call me a Nazi all the time. I'm not a Nazi. I’m the opposite. I’m somebody that’s saving our country,” he said.

“But they call me Nazi. … And the press is largely responsible for it. … I think one of the greatest terms I’ve ever come up with is fake news.”