President Donald Trump’s first 60 Minutes interview in five years drew the newsmagazine’s largest audience in several years.
Sunday’s edition drew 14 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s big data plus panel ratings. That’s the highest same-day total for 60 Minutes since January 2021 and well ahead of the show’s season average of 8.93 million viewers. Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Trump took up about half of the show’s running time, edited down from a 90-minute session. (CBS News put an extended, 73-minute cut of the interview on YouTube and the 60 Minutes Overtime site and published a complete transcript online.)
The previous season high for 60 Minutes was 11.1 million viewers on Oct. 26; like that installment, Sunday’s show followed a heavily watched NFL game. CBS’ broadcast of the Buffalo Bills’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs drew 30.84 million viewers, the second-largest NFL audience of the season so far.
CBS also says Sunday’s show has accumulated 144.9 million viewers across 60 Minutes social platforms (with a “view” meaning anything longer than a second of watching a video on platforms like Instagram and X and 30 seconds on YouTube).
Trump’s sit-down with 60 Minutes is notable because it came four months after he settled a lawsuit with CBS over a similarly edited interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. Trump claimed that by not airing the complete, unedited interview, 60 Minutes engaged in what amounted to “election interference.” CBS parent company Paramount, which was then in talks to merge with Skydance, settled the suit for $16 million in a move widely seen as a gesture to get regulatory blessing for the merger; CBS News lawyers had argued the complaint was baseless and that editing interviews is a universally accepted practice in journalism.
Trump had initially been scheduled for a 60 Minutes interview during the 2024 campaign as well but pulled out.
CBS News did not apologize as part of the lawsuit settlement but did agree to publish full transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates after they air.
