60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell caught President Donald Trump in a revealing moment while pressing him on the manifesto of the gunman who stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
In a Sunday interview on the shooting, O’Donnell referenced the sprawling manifesto written by the alleged gunman, Cole Thomas Allen, 31, which detailed his plan to kill Donald Trump and his top administration officials.
At one point, Allen allegedly wrote, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
“What’s your reaction to that?” O’Donnell asked Trump.
The agitated president, 79, reacted with a flurry of defiance—and inadvertently revealed that he himself believed he was the subject of the shooter’s remarks.
“Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” he said, before adding, “Yeah, he did write that. I‘m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
That’s when O’Donnell called him out for appearing to identify himself in the gunman’s words.
“Oh, you think—do you think he was referring to you?” she interrupted.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Trump shot back, before pausing for a beat as he appeared to process her question.
But he then pressed on without recalibrating, voluntarily invoking the backlash over his close friendship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
“I’m not a pedophile. You read that c--- from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated,” he said. ”Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things.”
Trump, who has been found liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, continued by once again attacking O’Donnell for mentioning part of the shooter’s manifesto.
“But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview and they’ll probably’—I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”
“Mr. President, these are the gunman’s words,” O’Donnell reminded him.
“Excuse me, excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes,” Trump said. “You’re a disgrace. But go ahead. Let’s finish the interview.”
He got in one last dig, hissing, “You’re disgraceful,” as O’Donnell moved on to her next question.
The White House and 60 Minutes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president has desperately sought to move past questions about his administration’s bungled Epstein files release and his own relationship with the convicted sex trafficker, but the issue continues to haunt him.
Files released by the Justice Department revealed that one woman was interviewed by the FBI in 2019 after accusing Trump of sexually abusing her when she was 13.
Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in connection with his friendship with Epstein and has not been charged with any crime.
