SAY CHEESE

Right-Wing ’60 Minutes’ Reporter Busted Grinning With Trump

The lame-duck president hosted a friendly media flock in the Oval Office on Friday.

Donald Trump’s crushing midterm defeat didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the conservative 60 Minutes newcomer tapped to handle the president’s first major post-election interview.

Ross Douthat, who joined CBS in July from The New York Times, was pictured grinning like the Cheshire Cat alongside Trump, 80, behind the Resolute Desk in a photo posted Friday by the White House’s “Rapid Response” X account.

The interview, filmed Friday in the Oval Office, marks Trump’s first one-on-one sit-down since Republicans suffered sweeping election losses Tuesday. It will air Sunday on the beleaguered 60 Minutes, the flagship newsmagazine of MAGA-fied CBS News.

CBS owner and Trump booster David Ellison appointed MAGA-curious Bari Weiss, 42, as editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025.

In May and June, Weiss—a former conservative blogger with no broadcast experience—purged a number of the long-running, award-winning 60 Minutes team.

The interview went to Douthat rather than one of the 60 Minutes veterans who survived Weiss’ spring purge, including Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, Jon Wertheim, and Norah O’Donnell.

Stahl, 84, who received the inaugural Daily Beast Power 100 Award on Thursday, said during a speech at the awards luncheon that she considered leaving the program when so many of her colleagues were fired. She ultimately stayed, however, fearing the program would be axed altogether and hoping to protect her remaining colleagues’ jobs.

“There was an urge to walk out in protest and in solidarity with our colleagues who had been abruptly and cruelly fired,” Stahl said.

“But we decided to stay out of a fear, a fear that if we didn’t, 60 Minutes would vanish, and all our colleagues who were still there—producers, editors, so forth—would be let go.”

Since the shake-up, 60 Minutes has been in a ratings slump as viewers shun the latest season, which began in October.

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CBS, meanwhile, offered a considerably less effusive glimpse of the meeting.

The official 60 Minutes X account posted an “action shot” of Douthat and Trump in conversation, announcing that the interview would cover the GOP’s midterm losses, congressional investigations, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, and the economy.

Douthat wasn’t the only Trump-friendly journalist invited into the Oval Office on Friday.

CNBC anchor Joe Kernen, 70, and his son, Awards Daily reporter Scott Kernen, 24, also stopped by for a grip-and-grin.

CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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