Just days after being fired in spectacular fashion for attempting to embarrass his CBS News bosses during a staff meeting, former 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley sat down for an interview with The New York Times.
Pelley was fired “for cause” last Tuesday after reports he confronted newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton in a heated all-hands meeting the day prior. The enraged journalist reportedly demanded answers on why the show’s previous executive producer, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were let go, and he allegedly accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of “murdering 60 Minutes.”
Freed from his contract, Pelley is taking his grievances public. Over the weekend, he sat down for his first post-termination interview with The New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro. It was posted online Sunday and immediately began making headlines for his unbelievable answers.
Murder Analogies
In an sit-down full of absurd and inappropriate comparisons and comments, the way he described his current emotional state right off the bat may have been the most absurd and inappropriate of them all.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I want to actually start by just asking you how you’re feeling in this moment.
PELLEY: …Well, if we want to talk about it at an emotional level, the best thing that I can imagine in terms of describing it is that it’s, it’s like your spouse was murdered. Um there’s some moments of the day I feel fine. There are some moments of the day that I just, frankly, fall apart when I least expect it… But I do want to be clear that I do not feel sorry for me. I don’t care about me. I’m fine. I care about these people that I left behind, the people who are still trapped there.
Yes, that was Pelley comparing his firing to his wife being murdered – something Megyn found stunning even for Pelley, who, contrary to his claims, she does believe is only concerned about himself.
“What could happen to you in your professional life – and I’ve had some negative things happen to me – that would compare to the murder of your spouse,” she asked. “This is not the right analogy. This is not where we should have gone, Scott. But it does show you how important he thinks 60 Minutes is, CBS News is, and, honestly, one of my overall takeaways of this whole interview was how out of touch he is.”
Remarkably, the murder comparisons didn’t end there. Here was Pelley talking about his behavior in the now infamous staff meeting:
PELLEY: That’s a family at 60 minutes… My former boss and former producer, Bill Owens, saved my life in a firefight in Iraq. So, Lulu, these bonds are pretty tight. And when somebody wipes out, murders a large number of your family members, people are hurt and shocked in disbelief and just desperate for some explanation.
The bit about Owens, who resigned from the newsmagazine in April 2025 and was not at all involved in the latest staff shakeup, was said through sniffles as Pelley seemingly tried to conjure some emotion. Regardless, Megyn said Pelley’s entire framing was off.
“It is not a family; it’s a news organization. Bari was brought in to revamp it, and some revamping is going to trample across 60 Minutes, Scott,” she explained. “This is a news organization. That is why it was possible for a new boss to come in and start moving chess pieces around and changing the way you play the game altogether… It’s allowed.”
While Megyn said there is nothing wrong with having close bonds with and loyalty to the people you work with, she accused Pelley of behaving like a “petulant child” who doesn’t understand the business side of the equation.
“It is a place of business, and business decisions are going to be made accordingly,” she said. “The entire interview shows somebody who doesn’t seem to understand that.”
Earth to Scott
What the hour-long interview does reveal, in Megyn’s view, is a person who completely lost touch with reality. “He talks about [the newsroom] like it is this revered place where we’re all family and we’re risking our lives every day. Okay, you have gotten too self-important,” she said. “The news is important, the First Amendment is important, but, let’s be honest, it’s not brain surgery. We don’t actually have people’s lives in our hands. We have information that is important to them that we should give responsibly and truthfully.”
“You don’t understand, Scott Pelley, that to the right half of the country thinks you left that business a long time ago,” she added. “You don’t think that, but we think you left that business a long time ago and we don’t look at you the way you see yourself at all.”
At another point in the interview, Pelley tried to tell Garcia-Navarro – much to her surprise – that he had never heard of Weiss prior to her hiring by new Paramount-Skydance owner David Ellison, and he was apparently particularly put off by her assertion that many people have a negative opinion of CBS News.
PELLEY: She, I am told, said something to the effect of, ‘Why do you think the country thinks you’re biased?’ But she didn’t offer any kind of a metric, you know. What’s your metric? Why do you think so? Do you have a poll? Is there market research? What are you talking about? Because we certainly didn’t believe that.
That encapsulates, Megyn said, Pelley and CBS News’ downfall in a nutshell. “He didn’t know who Bari Weiss was because he… doesn’t spend time on digital media or independent media. I guarantee you, he thinks that is way beneath him. Why familiarize himself with the Free Press and this irrelevant person until she became his boss’s boss? I believe him,” she explained. “And he has absolutely no idea that half the country thinks 60 Minutes has lost its way and is incredibly biased against right-leaning conservative or Republican people. No idea.”
“He didn’t know her and he doesn’t know her information because he doesn’t care,” Megyn continued. “He doesn’t fraternize with people like you and me. He thinks we’re gross. He thinks we’re… these dumb, Trump-supporting, Neanderthal deplorables, so he would he have any idea that what she is saying is true?”
A Word of Advice
After 37 years at CBS News, it is unclear what Pelley’s next move is. But Megyn had a piece of advice for the former CBS Evening News anchor as he weighs his options.
“Get out of your Upper East Side circles, Scott Pelley, and go to flyover country… Go anywhere,” she recommended. “Go to Ohio, where people are hurting right now, and ask them whether 60 Minutes celebrating Germany’s crackdown on free speech rights with criminal charges is as funny as Sharyn [Alfonsi] thought it was. Go figure out, through contacting real live Americans who don’t share your politics. Figure it out for yourself why Bari came in with that knowledge – not opinion – and was trying to do you a favor by telling you this.”
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,334 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.