Too Much TV: What CBS Didn't Air From Their Interview With Donald Trump

The most interesting parts of the "60 Minutes" interview with Donald Trump is what wasn't included on TV.

Here’s everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, November 2nd, 2025:

HERE ARE THE PARTS OF THE DONALD TRUMP INTERVIEW YOU DIDN’T SEE ON SUNDAY NIGHT’S EPISODE OF ‘60 MINUTES’
CBS parent Paramount Global very famously settled a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump for $16 million after he claimed the newsmagazine 60 Minutes had “deceptively edited” an interview with Kamala Harris in order to make the then-presidential candidate sound more mainstream. In the opening to her segment highlighting her interview with President Trump on Sunday night, CBS anchor Nora O’Donnell included the statement that while CBS settled the lawsuit, it never apologized or admitted to wrongdoing. Which is legally correct, although it’s also a distinction lost the President and his followers.

One of the interesting things about Sunday’s interview is despite Trump’s past complaints about the editing on 60 Minutes, his nearly 90-minute interview with O’Donnell was cut nearly in half by editing. Sometimes responses were dropped, other times entire conversations. So I decided to take a look at the entire interview and highlight what you didn’t see in the broadcast version of the interview.

So here is a look at part of the interview, showing which portions made the air and which didn’t. It took a bit of work, because the segments of the on-air version aired in a different order than happened during the full interview.

Working on this, I was struck by how much of what didn’t air from the interview were the parts that seemed more rant-filled and often confusing. Frequent complaints about Biden, claims about the economy that were wildly inaccurate. While I can’t know why certain decisions were made on what to include and what to pretty up or remove entirely from the broadcast version, most of the edits seem to fall into three buckets:

1) Getting rid of the umms and false starts of a sentence that every journalist edits out of an interview,

2) Subjects where Donald Trump stated things that were provably wrong and often a bit unhinged. But these comments tended to be off-topic from the main conversation, and

3) Statements in which Donald Trump needed to be fact-checked on air, or asked a follow-up question that would provoke a negative response.

While the 60 Minutes interview began with talk of the shutdown, the official CBS transcription of the interview shows that the interview began with a long discussion of foreign policy, including talks with China. Although much of that ended up being pushed deeper into the on-air version. But even in the shutdown talk, substantial passages were dropped (the unaired portions are in bold):

NORAH O’DONNELL: --some of that you have already mentioned. We are now approaching the longest shutdown in American history.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Democrats’ fault.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Under your presidency, we’re talking about more than a million federal workers who are not getting a paycheck, including our air traffic controllers. You see there’s traffic snarls out at the airports now. This weekend food aid for more than 42 million Americans is set to expire. What are you doing as president to end the shutdown?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, what we’re doing is we keep voting. I mean, the Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it. You know, they’ve never had this. This has happened like 18 times before. The Democrats always voted for an extension, always saying, “Give us an extension, we’ll work it out.”

They don’t wanna give us an extension because they used to think it was good for him, but the polls are turning around because-- not turning around. I just saw a poll where they’re down 20-25%. What’s happening is the people understand they’re losing so much, they call it Trump derangement syndrome. They are losing so much that they don’t know what to do. They’ve lost their way. They’ve become crazed lunatics. And all they have to do, Norah, is say, “Let’s vote.” And you can open the-- the economy could open up during our interview--

<The on-air version then inserts this bit of an explainer instead of the text below: “Senate Democrats say they will vote to reopen the government if Republicans agree to extend subsidies for over 20 million Americans we need Obamacare for their health insurance”).

NORAH O’DONNELL: Is there something you can do, though--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Maybe it did.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Is there something you can do--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: All I can do--

NORAH O’DONNELL: --to bring this to an end?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --is give the facts. Here’s what I can’t do. I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally. So that prisoners, and that people from mental institutions, and people that are drug dealers get vast amounts of money for healthcare. That I can’t do--

NORAH O’DONNELL: So my under--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: What I can do is I can continue to run a great country. We have the best economy we’ve ever had. I can continue to do that. What they should do-- look, this started a long time ago. I always said-- and you know I’ve been very consistent-- Obamacare is terrible.

It’s bad healthcare at far too high a price. We should fix that. We should fix it. And we can fix it with the Democrats. All they have to do is let the country open and we’ll fix it. But, you know, people are gonna get an 18-19% increase in Obamacare. It was a faulty program, it should’ve never been approved. But it was approved.

NORAH O’DONNELL: So now that we’re in--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If we fix it it’ll be-- one of the greatest achievements. But--

NORAH O’DONNELL: But if ending the government shutdown--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --they have to let the country open, and I’ll down with the Democrats, and we’ll fix it. But they have to let the country-- and you know what they have to do--

NORAH O’DONNELL: So your plan--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: All they have to do is raise five hands. We don’t need all of ‘’em.

NORAH O’DONNELL: But so you’re saying your plan is to tell the Democrats to vote the-- to end the shutdown.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Correct, very simple.

NORAH O’DONNELL: And that you will put forward a healthcare plan?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No. We will work on fixing the bad healthcare that we have. Right now, we have terrible healthcare and too expensive for the people, not for the government, for the people.

NORAH O’DONNELL: But Mr. President, with all due respect--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The people are paying--

NORAH O’DONNELL: --you’ve been talking about fixing the healthcare insurance plan since 2015--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure. And you can’t do it because of the Democrats. That’s right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Since 2015, you said you’d fix it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ve been talking about it for a long time. We almost did it. We were one vote short. We woulda had great healthcare.

<the one-air version inserts this passage, over video of the Senate voting: “He is referring to a Senate vote in 2019, when Republicans came one vote short of repealing Obamacare)

We were one vote short. And coupla Senators that we currently have made the mistake, and they-- they made a big mistake. John McCain made a mistake, frankly.

We were one vote short. We woulda had great healthcare. And I’ve been saying ever since, “We can fix it. It’s too expen--” it’s got two things. It’s too expensive, and it’s lousy healthcare. It’s too expensive for the people. They’re gonna get a very big increase this year. And it’s because--

NORAH O’DONNELL: Well, they’re gonna get an increase if they don’t-- if you don’t extend the subsidies.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, no. But the subsidies is part of it. We’re supposed to spend trillions of dollars to take care of something that-- that is defective. What I’m saying is, we can make it much less expensive for people and give them much better healthcare. And I’d be--

NORAH O’DONNELL: But where is that plan?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --willing to work with the Democrats--

NORAH O’DONNELL: But where is that plan?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --on it. The problem is, they want to give money to prisoners, to drug dealers, to all these millions of people that were allowed to come in with an open border from Biden. And nobody can do that. Not--

NORAH O’DONNELL: Can I just--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --one Republican would ever do that.

You can read my breakdown of the entire 60 Minutes interview here.

THE MONDAY MORNING CATCH-UP
There are so many interesting things I want to highlight from the weekend that I am seriously considering dropping them into a separate email moving forward:

* Other than liking the idea of being paid a dollar or two a word for writing a long profile. I have never been nostalgic enough to want to go back in time and write one of those old-school magazine travel profiles. But I’d love the opportunity to spend some time writing about next year’s Chefs Making Waves Cruise: Bobby Flay & Friends, a week-long “food & wine festival at sea,” which travels from Miami to Jamaica to the Grand Caymens.

The cruise includes a murderer’s row of TV chefs, including Flay, Leah Cohen, Scott Conant, Antonia Lofaso, Marc Murphy, Damaris Phillips, Michael Voltaggio, Jonathan Waxman, Brooke Williamson, and many more. There will apparently be the expected demos, Q&As and other events, as well as this dinner:

“Step inside The Bobby Flay Residence, a truly exclusive dining experience where the rules are few and the flavors are bound to be bold. Every Chefs Making Waves cruiser will enjoy a fully curated dinner menu crafted by The King of Flame himself. With Bobby at the helm, you’re in for a meal of a lifetime!”

Now while I suspect the word “curated” is doing a lot of work here, I’m still curious to sample the meal and see how accurately it reflects what I think of as Flay’s culinary vision.

So while I will sadly probably not experience this perfect combination of food and journalism opportunities next November, it’s well worth considering if you are a foodie. And don’t wait too long, because from what I can tell, many of the cabins are already sold out.

* TV Line’s Ryan Schwartz has some interesting thoughts about TV comedy living rooms, and how they should be considered in the context of the feel of a show:

I try not to write about shows I cover for TVLine here — but I can’t shake something about Shifting Gears. The show itself is fine, but its living room… is not. For a family sitcom, the space feels strangely sterile — all clean lines and showroom neatness, like something you’d see at Ikea. It’s a small thing, but it undercuts the premise. We’re supposed to believe this is how the house looked when Tim Allen’s character’s wife was still alive — the house their daughter (Kat Dennings) grew up in — yet it feels like a living room designed by a perennial bachelor: dark, modern, soulless.

I had a similar issue with one of my favorite multi-cams of the last decade: the Roseanne spinoff The Conners. When Darlene and Ben built their home in Season 5, it looked enormous — and not in a way that felt aspirational or earned. The living room didn’t resemble something built by people with limited resources. It wasn’t elegant by any means, just… off.

Both shows miss what the best sitcom sets understand: the home itself should feel like a character, shaped by the people who live in them.

* I don’t generally suggest topics that might make for a good documentary, but my son and I just watched an old episode of Antiques Roadshow which featured someone’s collection of memorabilia from their late mother’s career as a 1940’s basketball player for “Moore’s All-American Redheads,” an “all-girls professional basketball team” who traveled around in a station wagon playing around 200 games against any male team who would take them on. The “Queens of Big Time Basketball” not only exclusively played men’s-only teams, their posters promoted the fact they also played by “men’s rules.”

All of the player’s had to have an off-season job and this woman’s mother - Kamrar, Iowa resident Margie Arends - became a professional model when she wasn’t playing basketball. The woman told a story of how her mother had taught her son to play basketball before she died. Including a few tricks you could get past most refs, like “accidentally” stepping on someone’s foot when they were trying to take a shot.

This story just sounds amazing and while it would take a bit of archival work to put it together, I would much rather see this documentary than another one of those officially authorized docs the streamers seem to prefer right now.

* The first season of the NBC comedy The John Laroquette Show is near perfect in my eyes, and I’m happy to see that I can now stream episodes of the series on the diginet Rewind. I’ve never been able to coordinate a full conversation with Laroquette about the show, but during a conversation about his joining the cast of the NBC reboot of Night Court at the now-gone TCAs, we had a couple of minutes to touch on his show as well. Among other things, Laroquette told me that while no one seemed to pick up on it at the time, the entire first season was designed to follow the arc of the famous 12 steps of AA, with each episode centered on one step in the process.

WHAT’S COMING TODAY AND TOMORROW

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3RD:
* Black Snow (Acorn TV)
* Crutch Series Premiere (Paramount+)
* Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches (Netflix)
* Holiday Baking Championship Season Premiere (Food)
* Independent Lens: Life After (PBS)
* St. Denis Medical Season Premiere (NBC)
* The Gone (Acorn TV)
* The Great American Baking Show: Celebrity Holiday (The Roku Channel)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4TH:
* All’s Fair Series Premiere (Hulu)
* Leanne Morgan: Unspeakable Things (Netflix)
* Love & Hip Hop Miami Season Seven Premiere (BET)
* Ms. Pat Settles It Season Premiere (BET)
* Nevada Wild Series Premiere (Animal Planet)
* Squid Game: The Challenge Season Premiere (Netflix)
* The Curse Of Oak Island Season Premiere (History)
* Who Hired The Hitman? Series Premiere (Investigation Discovery)

SEE YOU EARLY TUESDAY MORNING!