“60 Minutes” abruptly pulled a segment Sunday about the Trump administration deporting hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to a megaprison in El Salvador, a stunning move that comes after President Donald Trump complained that the CBS news magazine “treated him much worse” under new management.
For days, CBS had been promoting Sunday’s segment, “Inside CECOT,” which promised to reveal “brutal and torturous conditions” inside El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center. According to a press release on Friday, the correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi had spoken to deportees who have now been freed. But the segment was filmed on Sunday evening, about two hours before it was due to air.
“The 60 Minutes report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” CBS told TheWrap in a statement. “We determined that additional reporting was required.”
Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that the segment “was fully finished and was thoroughly and attorney-checked,” but editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who watched it Friday, “decided to keep it.”
The decision to shoot such a highly promoted and presumably hard-hitting segment on the Trump administration is sure to come under intense scrutiny given the president’s recent comments on “60 Minutes” and his relationship with David Ellison, who now heads CBS News-parent Paramount.
Trump sued CBS last year over how “60 Minutes” edited an interview with his then-2024 rival, Kamala Harris. The network initially dismissed Trump’s suit as “without merit” and promised to “vigorously defend” itself. But CBS parent Paramount settled with Trump for $16 million in July as the company sought FCC approval to merge with Ellison’s Skydance.
Since the merger, Ellison has appointed Weiss, the co-founder of the Free Press, to serve as editor-in-chief. Trump has praised Weiss in the past, as well as Ellison, who is now in the running to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company. Ellison’s father, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is a Trump supporter.
Trump returned to “60 Minutes” last month for his first interview since the deal. “I see good things happening in the news. I really do. And I think one of the best things that happens is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership,” said Trump. “I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened to a free, open and good press in a long time.”
But earlier this month, after “60 Minutes” aired an interview with his former ally-turned-critic Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump referred to the solution as targeting ownership.
“My real problem with the show, however, was not the traitor’s low IQ, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, allows such a show to air,” Trump wrote. “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD PROPERTY, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FALSE REPORTING about your favorite President, EU!”
And last week, Trump unloaded again, “For those people who think I’m close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that ’60 Minutes’ treated me much worse than the so-called ‘takeover’, than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I hate to see my enemies.”
Watch a teaser for the “60 Minutes” segment below:
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