How scared should we be by Trump’s heavily edited appearance on a US news programme this weekend, and Elon Musk’s Grokipedia?
Y
ou know how I’m going to be able to tell that I’ve really made it as a writer in America? When our very handsome (much better-looking than Zohran Mamdani!) and very high-IQ leader Donald Trump gives me a personal shoutout to commend me on what a wonderful job I’m doing. As we all know, a good journalist should always make the rich and powerful feel comfortable.
While I wait for that day to come, I’m watching and learning from the head honchos at CBS. Trump appeared on CBS News’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night for his first sit-down with the show in five years and commented on how much better the network has become after its owner, Paramount, was taken over by his billionaire allies, the father-and-son duo Larry and David Ellison.
If you watched the interview on TV, you might have missed that particular bit because (weird!) it didn’t get aired. Nor did the bit where Trump said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who according to the FT was picked by David Ellison for her pro-Israel views, was a “great new leader”. Nor did a bit where Trump boasted how “60 Minutes paid me a lotta money,” while referencing his $16m settlement from Paramount for what he called a “deceptively” edited interview with Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes in 2024. Also not fully aired on the TV broadcast: a segment in which the president claimed he didn’t know a crypto tycoon who went to prison for breaching money laundering laws, despite the fact that Trump pardoned him. That bit, along with all the others, did appear in the full text transcript published online.
