President Trump’s frustrated response to a crypto corruption question shoehorned at the end of his 60 Minutes interview was cut from the show’s final edit.
CBS aired a 28 minute version of the Trump interview on TV, then released a 73 minute extended cut online, which was also shared by the White House’s RapidResponse 47 X account.
The MAGA social media account claimed it was the “FULL” Trump interview that came “without the network’s edits and cuts.” An editor’s note on the YouTube upload of the extended interview said it was “condensed for clarity.”
However while a tense exchange over crypto corruption with interviewer Norah O’Donnell featured as part of the full written transcript on the 60 Minutes Overtime site, it did not appear in any online video version.
At the end of the interview, which was conducted at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, O’Donnell asks Trump if she can ask two more questions.
During the interview she had frequently mentioned she was conscious of time and occasionally interrupted some of Trump’s longer answers.
“That means they’ll treat me more fairly if I do,” Trump, 79, said, as per the CBS transcript. “I want to get…. Now is good. Okay. Uh, oh. These might be the ones I didn’t want. I don’t know. Okay, go ahead.”
O’Donnell, 51, then asks Trump about people he has pardoned, including the crypto billionaire Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who was let out of jail in September after pleading guilty to money-laundering violations.
Some of Trump’s answer went to air in the truncated version of the interview, including where the president admitted he had “no idea” who the man he had pardoned is.
“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said of CZ. “I know he got a four month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”
CZ made his fortune as the founder of crypto exchange Binance. The Wall Street Journal claimed CZ had previously struck a $2 billion deal with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.
In the aired interview, O’Donnell asks Trump, “How do you address the appearance of pay for play?” To which he responded, “Well, here’s the thing, I know nothing about it…”
However, when O’Donnell again asked if Trump was “concerned about the appearance of corruption” over pardoning CZ due to the links to his family, the transcript revealed the president became annoyed.
“I can’t say, because- I can’t say- I’m not concerned. I don’t- I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, ‘Can I ask another question?’ And I said, yeah. This is the question-”
O’Donnell cut in to say “And you answered-” as the president continued on to say, “I don’t mind. Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn’t have to answer this question. I’m proud to answer the question. You know why? We’ve taken crypto-”
O’Donnell interrupted Trump, presumably to repeat her question, and Trump said “Excuse me” before continuing his presidential crypto sales pitch without directly addressing the corruption angle.
“We’re number one in crypto in the whole world,” Trump said. “Other people wanna be. They’re fighting like hell to be. But we’re number one in crypto because I’m the president… We are number one in crypto and that’s the only thing I care about. I don’t want China or anybody else to take it away. It’s a massive industry.”
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS and the White House for comment.
A voiceover from O’Donnell noted in the aired 60 Minutes broadcast that World Liberty Financial has denied any involvement in the pardon.
60 Minutes also did not air on TV a moment where Trump bragged about his $16 million lawsuit victory over Paramount, which owns CBS, over what the president believed was deceptive editing of a Kamala Harris interview.
Trump launched a $20 billion lawsuit claiming Harris’ interview had been edited to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party” ahead of the election.
The case was settled in July, ahead of Paramount needing FCC approval for their $8 billion merger with media company Skydance.
Trump did not mention Harris by name Sunday, but said “the press got behind her. Oh, they were so behind her. But eventually she failed because she couldn’t speak. She wasn’t a very intelligent person, in my opinion. But she couldn’t speak properly. She could not speak.”
The president then noted, “And actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you.“
The Daily Beast has contacted Harris’ office for comment.
Appearing to speak of CBS’s new MAGA-curious editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, he continued, “I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great– from what I know. I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person.”
He continued, “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me- a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
As part of the Paramount settlement, while they were not required to apologize to Trump, they agreed that “in the future, 60 Minutes will release transcripts of interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after such interviews have aired, subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”
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