President Donald Trump returned to 60 Minutes on Sunday for the first time since successfully sued them for what he said was a misleading edit on their interview with Kamala Harris last fall. CBS News’ parent company wound up settling the case, much to the consternation of many inside the CBS News organization.
The Interviewer
The president sat with former CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, and it was very interesting watching her try to pretend she is just a totally fair, earnest, objective reporter with Donald Trump. She loathes him. It was seeping out. But watching her even try to pretend was fascinating because it is clear she is going to be taken behind the Bari Weiss woodshed if she doesn’t get in line.
Our friend Bari is not really taking any prisoners over there. People are getting fired left and right, and Nora O’Donnell doesn’t want to be on the list. She already lost her gig at CBS Evening News. Now, she is a correspondent on 60 Minutes, and she doesn’t want to lose that too because then she is out to pasture.
So, Norah O’Donnell did her level best to act like she is nonpartisan, but it did not go very well. My team put together a montage that you can see in the clip above of just her continually interrupting Trump. It was so annoying to listen to.
But the real reason I felt uncomfortable for most of the sit down was because she sort of tried to look like an ingénue with the ‘But Mr. President.’ ‘Mr. President.’ Every time he tried to make a point, she stepped on him. After all, you can’t have Donald Trump making points on 60 Minutes.
The Left’s Narrative
There was one point he did manage to get out when she tried to press him on the ‘horrible, terrible ICE raids.’ The narrative coming out of Team Blue right now – from Barack Obama on down – is that masked ICE agents are running around kidnapping American citizens in the streets and they are never seen again.
Those are lies. It is not true. The American citizens who have been deported by ICE were deported because they are the children of illegal immigrants. Their mothers got deported, and those women were asked whether they would like their kids to remain in the United States with other family members or go with them. Many of the mothers have chosen to take their children with them, and that is translated into, ‘They’re arresting American citizens.’ That is not what is happening.
The American citizens who are being arrested “in the streets,” by the way, are the ones who are behaving terribly against ICE agents and at ICE arrests. It is the ones who are committing crimes like assault, battery, trespass, and/or vandalism (i.e. the same things you or I would be arrested for if we committed them in the street).
The ICE Question
In any event, Norah O’Donnell asked President Trump whether these ‘horrible, terrible ICE raids’ have gone too far.
O’DONNELL: Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?
TRUMP: No, I think they haven’t gone far enough, because we’ve been held back by the by the judges, by the liberal judges, that were put in by Biden and by Obama–
O’DONNELL: You’re okay with those tactics?
TRUMP: Yeah, because you have to get the people out. You know, you have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals.
O’DONNELL: …A lot of the people that your administration has arrested and deported aren’t violent criminals. Landscapers, nannies, construction workers–
TRUMP: Landscapers who are criminals.
O’DONNELL: Farm workers, the family of U.S. service members.
TRUMP: I need landscapers and I need farm workers more than anybody, okay?
O’DONNELL: Is it your intent to deport people who do not have a criminal record?
TRUMP: We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be: You came into the country illegally, you’re going to go out. However, you’ve also seen you’re going to go out, we’re going to work with you, and you’re going to come back into our country legally.
What did Norah O’Donnell not ask? Anything about the attacks on ICE agents who are being shot at; who have actual bounties on their heads; who are unfairly and uniformly dragged by outlets like CBS News every night. She also did not mention anything about Laken Riley, or Joselyn Nungaray, or Rachel Morin who were assaulted and murdered by illegal immigrants.
Norah didn’t spend time on that, and I think we know why. It is because she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with illegal immigration – or at least she didn’t when it came to Kamala Harris. Here is how she came to the former vice president’s defense on the border crisis after the presidential debate last year.
O’DONNELL: When the topic of immigration came up, which is one that Donald Trump likes to hammer this administration on; he likes to call Kamala Harris, wrongly, ‘the borders czar.’ That was not specifically her job.
Yes, it was. You see, some people are on the nose with their bias, while other people work it into their commentary like she did right there. Yes, Kamala Harris was the border czar, and that is Norah O’Donnell trying to run cover for Kamala Harris to remove that set of responsibilities from her so she didn’t have to share in what happened to this country.
Unsound Reporting
And what happened to this country is exactly what Trump and Tom Holman are trying to fix with these deportations and the ICE raids. But she was one of the arsonists, so, of course, she is not going to be honest about the fire that is burning. This is what they do. If it is a bad fact for them, they are very capable of erasing it.
She did it again when asking Trump about lawfare. None of the questions or framing have the context an actually sound, honest reporter would make sure of. This is, after all, CBS News. And CBS News is not sound.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,185 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.