← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“Blind, unswerving loyalty”
00:41:49
June 4, 2026; 4pm: Nicolle Wallace and guests cover Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s tenure at Trump’s Justice Department and how his dogged pursuit of Trump’s agenda of retaliation against his perceived political enemies landed Blanche the permanent role as Attorney General.
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C
Hi there everyone, for Clark in New York. If there is one value Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear he treasures above all others, it is blind, unswerving, slobbering loyalty. He values it over competency and principles, over his own political party affiliation, over the rule of law. And Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's tenure atop the Justice Department has been defined by exactly that. So now Donald Trump is rewarding him for it. Here's Trump yesterday.
- [01:44]
D
Tomorrow I'm instructing Dan and everybody else that's involved in that very complicated process, which is going to go, I think, very quickly that we are going to make him permanent Attorney General.
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C
Permanent Attorney General. If you're wondering how Todd Blanche, a man who actually, surprisingly now faces an uphill Senate confirmation battle, secured Trump's vote to be nominated for the top job permanently, look no further than Todd Blanche's dogged pursuit of Donald Trump's agenda of retribution and the complete politicization of the Department of Justice. For Todd Blanche, that comes seemingly without any limits. And he's done it in the barely two months since Pam Bondi was fired and Blanche was appointed acting ag. Almost as soon as Blanche assumed that role, he hired Trump ally Joe DiGenova. Joe DiGenova was hired to breathe new life into an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan. Donald Trump, of course, blames John Brennan for the intelligence community's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Todd Blanche led the effort to indict former director of the FBI Jim Comey, a frequent target of Donald Trump's political attacks, for posting a photo of Seashells Todd Blanche approved an investigation into former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Hutchinson testified before the January 6th select committee about Donald Trump's role in stoking the events of January 6th. Todd Blanche also worked to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of members of the militia groups the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys for the crimes committed during the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. What a record, right? But there's more. Todd Blanche also oversaw the criminal prosecution of the civil rights organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Todd Blanche fought tooth and nail to defend, to actually sell to Congress Donald Trump's pet $1.8 billion slush fund, even as members of Trump's own party balked at the potential of buckets of cash going to people who assaulted police officers and were convicted for doing so. Even today, Todd Blanche is giving Donald Trump one of his most highly desired prizes in his insatiable quest for revenge. Our colleagues Kendallanian and Carol Lennig report that former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information. John Bolton could face up to five years in prison and a $2.25 million fine. John Bolton had been facing potentially more years than that. And while it remains to be seen whether Todd Blanche can make it through the Senate confirmation process and be the full fledged AG, something that just 14 months ago was a guarantee for any Trump nominee because of the willingness of Republicans to greenlight everything, now it's at least a question. But no matter what happens next, the stain that Blanche's blind loyalty to Donald Trump has left on the Department of Justice will live forever. Todd Blanche not only undermines the Department of Justice in which he once served and now leads, but takes aim at federal judges as well.
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D
These activist judges that they have a robe on, but they are more political, or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or DA and you can't forget that. You can't forget that a judge doesn't get a special place simply because a robe is put on them. My guys, the men and women that work at the department, stay up all night, get an appeal in stayed, go back the discord. Judge. Judge still wants to just do whatever he or she wants to do. We need you because. Because it is a war and it is something that we will not win unless we keep on fighting.
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C
So war against those judges. And you should win. Why? Because you stay up all night. Unsurprisingly, earlier this week, federal judges publicly warned that attacks by people like that and elected officials have eroded Americans confidence in our judicial system. Donald Trump's continued attempts to dismantle the Department of Justice as we know it, brick by brick, is where we begin today with former federal judge Michael Ludig. Also joining us, New York Times investigative reporter Mike Schmidt, plus former DHS chief of staff during Donald Trump's first term. Miles Taylor is here. Let me deal with one of the big stories of the day with you. First, Mike, the news that the New York Times is reporting that John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to one count of retaining classified information. What do we know about how that came to be?
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E
Look, the government had an enormous amount of leverage over Bolton in the sense that even if he went to trial, he. And he lost, he could have faced decades in prison. And putting aside the merit of the case and whether it was born as part of, you know, retribution and such, from Bolton's perspective, that was an incredibly risky thing to be confronting of decades in prison. But by taking a plea deal, he will be essentially narrowing the amount of time he could potentially go to prison. Look, the, the Bolton case has always sort of stood out in the retribution bucket. It's clear that Donald Trump wanted John Bolton prosecuted. It's clear that he wanted the, you know, all of this to happen. The issue in Bolton's case is that the case had been brought by career prosecutors, which had been different than some of the Comey and James cases, which had been brought by more politically appointed prosecutors. And on top of that, the indictment against Bolton, if you read it, had a fair amount of his own, you know, texts and messages and such that showed his, you know, exchanging of classified information. And look, we, you know, one of the biggest issues that Donald Trump has had in terms of retribution is that he was told during his first term that you should not talk about the government going after your enemies, because if the government eventually does do that, the, the public will not trust what the Justice Department is doing because they'll believe that the Justice Department is doing it at your behest. Obviously, Donald Trump had completely ignored that, but it leaves us in a position today of saying, okay, did John Bolton accept this plea agreement because indeed, you know, the government had a legitimate case against him, or did he accept this plea agreement because the Justice Department went after him and this was the best, you know, you know, outcome that he could have for himself?
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C
Miles, you argue that this had very little to do with the law. Explain.
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F
Well, look, I mean, as far as classified information cases go, Nicole, we are talking about a candle flicker versus a wildfire. And by a candle flicker, I mean John Bolton is alleged to have kept private diaries. He, he is not alleged to have taken documents home with classified markings. Compare that, a man who kept private diaries to write a book. He's not alleged to have put a single piece of that classified information in his book compared to Donald Trump, who took hundreds of pages of classified documents intentionally out of the United States government, kept them for what prosecutors were apparently prepared to alleged was for personal self interested reasons, refused to hand them back over to the United States government, was charged with it, and, and had the case dropped. The Trump case is vastly bigger and he wanted to come back into government and find similar cases against his enemies. That's why I say this is not a plea deal. This was a shakedown. Now, the reporting indicates that some of this began during the Biden administration, but by all appearances, the Biden administration pretty much let this one go. Then the Trump administration comes in. His top officials get briefed that there was an open case into John Bolton, and they apparently get very excited about it, from the CIA to the FBI. So look, what I would say is this doesn't appear that this is actually about the law or professional judgment. At the end of the day, this is about revenge. And John Bolton said something when he first got charged. He referenced a quote, Nicole, that you've used on this program before of the head of Joseph Stalin's secret police in Russia, which was, you show me the man, I'll show you the crime. Do any of us really think it's a coincidence that a dozen people who have written books critical of Donald Trump have been threatened by him or put under investigation? It is no coincidence they showed the man to the Department of Justice. They went and found the crime. And I think this is a much, much bigger story about the threats to democracy being. Because Trump's revenge tour, because of this success, is going to enter its next phase.
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C
Well, Judge Ludig, I guess the next phase begins officially with Todd Blanche. I mean, Todd Blanche has overseen the attempts, the unsuccessful attempts to indict Jim Comey and the then successful one to indict him over the seashells. He's overseen and defended the attempt to settle with himself with the IRS is what a judge seemed to surmise. He went to Capitol Hill and had the, I think the legal term is chutzpah to try to sell a slush fund for insurrectionists to Republicans who have a political boot on their throats because of Donald Trump's war with Iran and the ailing economy. I mean, Blanche is the Attorney general that Donald Trump has been looking for since early 2017, when he was first reported by Mike and his colleagues in the New York Times to want Comey indicted.
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D
Nicola, every word that Todd Blanch spoke on that replay at the beginning of your show was despicable and reprehensible. Prior to the Trump administration, there's not a public official in the land who had ever said anything like what the president himself has, has said and Todd Blanch just said about the federal courts and even the individual judges on the federal courts. That said, obviously, Todd Blanch was there and in many other instances has simply been parroting the, the, the words of the President of the United States. Todd Blanch is a classic puppet of, of the man in the highest office in the land. So, Donald Trump, he began his first day in office in January 2025 in starting a war against the federal judiciary, the Constitution and the rule of law in America. He knew what he was doing. He knew that his entire presidency that was to come was dependent and based upon essentially a pyramid scheme of unconstitutional and illegal programs, initiatives, acts, actions and executive orders. In that sense, under our Constitution, this presidency was doomed from day one. The only way that this presidency could have ever, ever succeeded was if Donald Trump was successful in his war against the federal courts and the federal judges. And he has waged that war with a vengeance like we have never seen in America in 250 years. For the past 18 months, well, up until about two or three months ago, he got away with it. And I was saying all the while that the jury was out as to who would win that war between the President, United States and the federal courts. Today, for the first time in 18 months, I am prepared to say that Donald Trump has miserably, humiliatingly lost that war against the nation's federal courts and the rule of law.
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C
The judges themselves and former judges like yourself, have given voice to the extraordinary pressure that this fight that you described perfectly has put them under. Can you talk about that a little bit?
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D
Yes, I would been proud to. As you know, approximately 2 to 300 retired federal and state judges have come together over the past year and a half, each one of whom wants to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law in America. Each one of whom believes that the Constitution and the rule of law is in grave peril because of the actions and the conduct of this President of the United States, carried out by his loyal lieutenants at the Department of Justice. And these judges want to say no. They understand, of course, that their colleagues who are still active and sitting on the benches, both federal and state, they cannot defend themselves from from the president's attacks. And the Supreme Court has, has made quite clear that it does not intend to defend the federal courts from the president's attacks. So it's been left to the judges of the United States of America, active and retired, to stand alone against the this president in favor of democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law. They are honoring their oaths to the letter every day since January 20, 2025.
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C
It puts them in a small category. I want to talk more and I want to show you what one current federal judge said in her own words. I have to sneak in a break before I do that. Everyone sticks around. Also ahead for all of us, one of the members of the old guard at 60 Minutes, a 30 year veter of the program, says the 60 minutes that we've all come to know, quote, no longer exists. We'll bring you the latest reporting on that story ahead. And later in the broadcast. Donald Trump on Washington's renovated reflecting pool. He has a body of water mixed up with skyscrapers, it would appear from his chart, choosing to focus on his beautification projects that poll after poll are showing voters are not happy about. Voters from the right and the left will show you all of that and much more when Deadline White HOUSE continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com, start for free and finally breathe.
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A
Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy. When she were she worked in the White House and I reported on it. And now we're friends and colleagues. And on our podcast, Clock it, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics. Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it, too.
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D
Clock it with Simone and Eugene, all episodes available now. And it's an acting position. It's not a permanent. He's not gonna be permanent because, you know, I don't think he'd want to be permanent. But he's a very smart guy and he may find out some things about the rigged elections.
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C
We're back with Judge Ludig, Mike Schmidt and Miles Taylor. Miles, that was Donald Trump just now talking about Bill Pulte. He's the housing guy turned acting director of national intelligence. That's Donald Trump moving the goalpost, essentially. Trump for. I know, he's so laughable. I wouldn't make him permanent, even I wouldn't do that. But he, quote, may be effective for a short period of time. He may find something about rigged elections. We are way past the saying the quiet part out loud phase, and we are just broadcasting the attempts to use the nation's intelligence agencies to sow conspiracy theories.
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F
Yeah, worse than that. I honestly think Donald Trump would have been better off if he just said in that conversation, hi, everyone, Bill Pulte is preparing to break the law over at the office of the Director of National Intelligence. And let me tell you why I think that. Because Donald Trump since 2020 has been obsessively fixated on this executive order I helped write for him. It's called EO 3848. It's an executive order that gave the president, any president, the ability to sanction a foreign government that meddles in our elections. But some flunky lawyer told him in 2020 that if you read it in a different way, that executive order might give your office of the Director of National Intelligence the authority to go seize voting machines and meddle in the elections themselves. It does not. It does not. It does not. That order doesn't allow the president to do anything like that. But he's been so fixated on it since then that in January he said his biggest regret was that in 2020, he didn't send the National Guard to go seize those ballots. And then weeks later, Tulsi Gabbard, as the Director of National Intelligence, was, goes into Georgia and as part of the seizure of ballots. And now we've got Donald Trump again signaling something like that might happen of the new acting director looking at those previous election results or potentially meddling in this one. I'll say it now, I said it before, that would be illegal. And the executive order he had on his desk years ago does not make it legal.
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C
Mike Schmidt, you and your colleagues have reported for years on what Donald Trump sought to do after he lost the 2020 election. And the various tenuous, frail things, I guess guardrails is what we used to call them, that kept him from doing them. Pulte is like the bad sequel, right? Like the storm gathers strength out at sea, it comes roaring back. And they put Pulte in charge of all those unrealized ambitions from late 2020.
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E
The interesting thing about the second term has been that those that have fallen out of favor with Trump are those that he thinks haven't go enough. But to Most people, they've gone more than far. This is the same issue that he had with Pam Bondi, that Pam Bondi wasn't moving quickly or efficiently or effectively enough to follow through on his retribution campaign. It seems that he had similar concerns about Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence. So it's even in the second term, the issues are that they are not moving fast enough on the issues that he wants. And that's why you see someone like Bill Pulte in a position like that. And it's just sort of remarkable given how much the goalposts have moved in the second term compared to the first, because in the second term, even someone like Bondi and Gabbard were doing a lot of what Trump wanted. Gabbard did go all the way down to Atlanta when those ballots were seized, but in his eyes, it still wasn't enough. So you have to wonder, what does that look like going forward? What is it that he wants that we have not seen? And how could that manifest itself?
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C
Judge Ludig, when you testified under oath, I was on set, we were at 30 Rock, and you described Donald Trump as a, quote, clear and present danger. And I still remember when you said that you could hear a pin drop, both because it elicits such a visceral response to think of an outgoing president and candidate to be president again as a clear and present danger to our country. And second, because of who it was coming from. A lifelong conservative. Describe the threat and the danger now.
- [23:53]
D
Well, the threat and the dangers are both existential, both for American democracy and for the rule of law in America. But, Nicole, what I want to say today is that the tectonic plates of American politics have shifted overnight. And the, as we lawyers say, the. But for cause, for. For that tectonic shift was this corrupt slush fund that Donald Trump attempted for some reason. And we, we can explain it, but we don't need to today. That was the first thing that this president's done during this presidency that every American understood. They understood that it was corrupt self aggrandizement of himself, his family and his friends and allies, and in particular, his friends and allies who have supported him in the 2020 presidential election and his insurrection against the Constitution of the United States. It all came full circle with this slush fund. And the American people saw for the first time, at long last, what this man and what his presidency is about. And it is for that reason that I believe that the beginning of the end of this presidency will be remembered in history. As this week.
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C
What does it say that in the same week? And I don't know if it's the beginning of the end. It's definitely the end of the beginning. Todd Blanche rises to be Attorney General.
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D
That's really my point, Nicole. I didn't get an opportunity to say it, but the point really is that the slush fund has now become the symbol of this presidency.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And there's not an American alive who will accept that presidency. And it begins with the Congress of the United States. So the Congress of the United States, we now know, will never approve this slush bond. And we now know that for the same reasons, since Todd Blanche is now the symbol of that slush bond, that the Senate of the United States will never confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States. Donald Trump knows that. But this has always been his Achilles heel, his political Achilles heel. He understands politics. He knows to a certainty that Todd Blanche will never be confirmed. But he cannot resist himself. And it will end up in another and another and another humiliating defeat, one right after the other, until this presidency comes to a humiliating end. It's. It's as plain as day to everyone, but it's kind of a great tragedy in that sense. Everyone understands it except Donald Trump, the President of the United States.
- [27:55]
C
And that's the surreal moment we all have to cover. Judge Ludig, thank you so much for coming back and for starting us off. Mike Schmidt, thank you for your reporting. Miles Taylor, thank you for your insights and your as yet to be published analysis. Emphasis on all this when we come back, after the very public war of words between a veteran journalist and his new Trump aligned management, there is some very real anxiety and justified anxiety in this country about the status and the future of the First Amendment. We'll get to that. Next.
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Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com, start for free and finally breathe.
- [28:48]
A
Thursday, June 25th.
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D
Join Rachel Maddow, Ally Velshi and Jen Psaki in Philadelphia for A dynamic evening. Mississippi Now Live presents We the People, America 250.
- [28:59]
A
Get tickets at MSN America 250 today. What's been said by the President and by his staff and by the Chairman
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D
of the FCC that they don't like
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A
the way CBS has been operated. They don't like the fact that it's on the air.
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D
They would like to see it taken off the air.
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A
They've said that a number of times they like to see people fired and that's what's happened. I think that this is journalistic interference.
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D
It makes no business sense whatsoever.
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A
The show is still doing very well. It's the highest rated news program on television and it has been that way for more than 50 years.
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C
That was retired 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft issuing a stark warning publicly about the destruction of independent journalism by Donald Trump's allies over at cbs. That warning comes after the firing of veteran correspondent Scott Pelley this week and a number of other correspondents and key senior staff members. Today there's brand new reporting that the fallout also extends to the only three correspondents now left at 60 Minutes on that status reports this today, quote, according to people familiar with the matter, Bill Whitaker, Leslie Stahl and John Wertheim were met Wednesday to discuss their futures at the venerable news magazine. Deadline is also reporting on this story about anxious CBS News staffers wondering what and who could be next from that report, quote, I have been in this business a long time and I have never seen anything this bad, a CBS News insider told Deadline, quote, How are we going to even be able to put on a show next season? A longtime staffer said today of 60 Minutes, quote, We are running out of time and people here and we need both. I want to bring in the executive editor of Deadline.com, dominic Patton, who's bylined on that reporting. Also joining us, Scott McFarlane. He is the chief Washington correspondent and host for Midas Touch, but before that he was a justice correspondent for CBS News. Let me start with you, Scott. Does anything that's been alleged by Scott Pelley or Sharon Alfonsi or Cecilia Vega ring true in terms of your experience as a correspondent for CBS News?
- [31:18]
G
Nobody ever put a heavy hand on any of my reporting. And Nicole, in my final days at CBS in March, I was saying on the CBS Evening News, Trump's lying about the 2020 election and Trump is lying about January 6th. And they invited me back the next day and the next day and the next day. But let me tell you something about Dominic's reporting. I'm not sure how many sources he has on that, but let me add a whole bunch more. That's exactly what's going on inside CBS News. There is a concern about getting through the day and through the week and through the month because, yes, they're losing a lot of people, but yes, they're also risking their brand through these changes. The way a brand succeeds is through consistency over the years. Consistency, familiar faces, familiar product through the years, they're making wholesale changes to the cash cow inside CBS News. It might work. The changes could improve things. But we've seen this with Coke in the 1980s. We've seen this with other things in media where they make a change to the cast and people don't come back to watch or buy again. This is some high stakes, high wire stuff.
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C
How could they make it better?
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G
One of the things you could do is try to introduce it on other platforms. If you want to be more digital and not just on broadcast, you want to have a more 360 degree presence seven days a week, more kinetic. That's an ambitious goal and it's a worthy goal. But how do you succeed, Nicole, if you don't have your tentpole talent? The things that made the brand attractive in the first place? Can you be attractive in the digital space on Mondays through Saturdays, Nicole, if you don't have Scott Pelley and Cecilia Vega and Sharon Alfonsi, it all gets harder.
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C
Dominic, take us through what you're reporting.
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A
Well, for one thing, I'd like to thank you, Scott, for the compliment. Much appreciated. And your work is always much appreciated. Look, it's chaos theory in action over there. I mean, that's what it is. It's people who are. There's another quote from our piece from an insider who said it's closed door, toxic environment over there. I mean, nobody's really talking out in public. We talked about, you know, status, talked about the meeting of the three remaining senior correspondents. They're trying to figure out their future. We've heard they're all taking a breath and kind of figuring out where things are going to land. But, you know, there's a lot of breaths to be taken. Let's put it very, very bluntly there. I think also too, when Scott's talking, talking about brand, I really think that's interesting because I think that the goal here is to destroy the brand because that's what's happened. It's already happened now because you have not only 60 minutes basically gutted like, like a dead tree from the inside, but you also have this tremendous anxiety over at CBS News, which before the 60 minutes purge was the big problem over there for Bari Weiss and her team because they had completely changed that around. And we're watching a ratings cratering happening. Whether or not it's an issue of trust, whether or not it is, as, you know, people talk about, was there political interference? Was there not? Was there a kind of a leaning towards things, was there not the result simply Is, is it is a husk of what it used to be. And maybe, maybe change is good. People talked about that when they spoke to Ted Johnson and I for our piece of yesterday. But the reality is, is if you're going to make change, why are you breaking something that's not broken? You talked about it. CBS is extremely successful on linear television, one of the few things that still are. It also has been very successful in its digital platform endeavors as well. So it's not like it left that out and they're trying to fill in the gap there. If you're leaning towards the future, linear televisions doesn't look that great. 60 minutes at least has well, well stepped into the future and was bounding along until Barry Weiss came along.
- [34:57]
C
Yeah, I mean let me cut through the, the pretense I guess that there, maybe there was room to improve. Like that's a fine, respectfully analysis of the, and the evening news which are perpetually in last place. But 60 Minutes is the, the white whale that every other news organization in the world has been looking for forever. And what Scott Pelley alleges is that they quote made him insert things that weren't true. This isn't about wanting to do self improvement. And Pelly wasn't on board for doing more like face to camera clips for ignore. This is not that. This is an allegation from the one time anchor of the evening news. Now the tentpole, to use your word of 60 minutes. You said they forced him to put things into stories. You also, I mean we gloss over Sharon Alfonsi which if she was the only one that left, that would have been a scandal in its own right. Her Seekot reporting was held ostensibly for more calls to be made to the Trump White House. And it's not even clear to me why Cecilia Vega was fired. I mean what Dominique happens as a consequence for gutting a news program for telling the truth?
- [36:12]
A
Well, at this point, Nicole, I would say nothing. I mean the fact of the matter is, is Barry Weiss was put in place by David Ellison soon after his company Skydance bought Paramount. Now they're on the verge of buying Warner Brothers Discovery. And we all know very clearly, as Steve Kroff talked about in the, in the clip before we came on, look, the Trump White House are no fans of cbs. To be honest, conservatives have not been fans of CBS for decades, going back to Richard Nixon through the Reagan era and et cetera, et cetera. But this has become much more intense. There has been of course a payout that occurred over what was basically a weak, lame lawsuit about supposed editing at CBS at 60 Minutes over a Kamala Harris interview just before the election in 2024. There has been a distinct attempt to pander to the White House. Now you can say whether or not that's transactional corporate America in action. Fair enough. You want to say that, but this is going a little bit further because this is transactional for $111 billion deal, taking over Warner Brothers Discovery. Clearly that is their end goal. And in the process of doing that, you're simply leaving. You're destroying yourself, you know, and this is, this is something that they are going to have to have consequences for. Are those consequences going to come from people pounding tables and stamping their feet? Well, I don't think the Ellison really care about that, to be honest. I think they have, as somebody once said, a high threshold for pain. And that threshold is obviously very high at this point. But I do think you're going to see repercussions happening down the line because America is in a politically fluid time if our, if the recent primaries are showing us anything. And certainly we are going to see a change. Certainly. We've already seen some Republicans are starting to break ranks with the MAGA loyalists. So there might be the Reckoning, which is always the third sequel in any, any franchise might be coming soon.
- [37:55]
C
Yeah, if I were writing fiction, the Reckoning would include all of the conservatives who used to care about the First Amendment joining with the pro democracy side. But there's a reason I don't write fiction. All right, no one's going anywhere. There's so much more to show you on this story. Stay with us.
- [38:13]
D
The Trump suck ups at CBS fired a great and deeply respected journalist, Scott Pelley, from his job at 60 Minutes because he stood up for truth and integrity. The president, of course, applauded this cowardly decision. He said, Scott Pelley is part of a gang of crooked stupid people, different from the gang of crooked stupid people he's a part of.
- [38:34]
A
CBS is getting more and more conservative to appease President Trump. Don't be totally shocked when they replace 60 minutes with the Kid Rock, My Pillow Guy news hour.
- [38:46]
C
We're living in a time when the punchlines from 12 months ago become policy if you wait long enough. Bill Pulte was loathed by not just Republicans on Capitol Hill. He was loathed by Trump's own cabinet. He's now the nation's acting Director of National Intelligence or will be in a couple of weeks. So we shouldn't rule anything out. I Guess is the point I would make about those jokes. I wonder, Scott, what you think replaces, I mean, I'll read you this from New York Magazine, quote, I think based on basically 60 minutes as the audience has known it, no longer exists. The firings are too substantial. It's very difficult for me to imagine a world without 60 Minutes or a show like 60 Minutes which is not afraid to take on the government. You see the timidity all across the broadcast schedule right now. The evening news shows are clearly being very careful about how they approach criticism of the government. I know from being in the government that that is true. There is no one that comes at you harder than 60 minutes. And I wonder what you make of the absence of that in terms of a media organ with 9, 10, 20 million viewers and consumers of the digital product as well.
- [40:03]
G
Nicole, Everybody except maybe Trump loses with 60 minutes getting damaged. And look at the reality here. You've got Jimmy Kimmel dunking on 60 Minutes. You have Scott Pelley alleging interference in 60 Minutes product. You have waves of people saying protest 60 Minutes on social media and politically, that's going to damage the brand. Just that sequence of events. And this is not like the cracker barrel logo. You can't just flip it back and restore everything overnight. So this could compromise the future of 60 Minutes. And what do you lose if 60 Minutes is damaged? Nobody cares, nor should anybody necessarily care about the personal fortunes of journalists. But you've lost the one thing in broadcasting which can cut through the clutter at a massive scale on a Sunday night where tens of millions of people can watch something right after a football game and the whole nation can still be captivated. That's rare at this moment. And respectfully, with a few exceptions of 60 Minutes would not sanewash this garbage. We're seeing this unhinged, unspooled name calling, often misogynistic, often racist stuff emanating from Washington. 60 Minutes would not platform it without the proper scrutiny. You'll lose that. You'll lose one of the few things that exist that don't sane Wash. Nicole, thankfully yours is one of those exceptions. You don't same wash. You don't platform this garbage either. And we are so grateful for that.
- [41:31]
C
Well, I mean, I have a iota symbol. I mean, thank you for the, for the, for the compliment, but I have, I have a thimble full of what 60 Minutes has in terms of reach. And to be honest, it is sort of behind. It's sort of in their shadow. Right? They, they, they chart the path for telling the truth when it's inconvenient and difficult. And Dominic, you talked about time. We talk a lot about time. Two and a half years is not a very long time in terms of we're talking about brands here. It takes decades to build a brand. It takes 15 minutes to destroy it. The brand of Trumpism will be a stinky, stinky sock a lot sooner than the two and a half years that this presidency ends. So we'll continue to watch this on all these metrics. Thank you guys so much for your great reporting on this. To be continued. Coming up next for us. Next time Pete Hegseth wants to suddenly dismiss top military leaders, he might actually have to explain those decisions to Congress. We'll explain next. There's growing pressure on Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth today after the House Armed Services Committee voted across party lines to force the Pentagon to provide reasoning for their ongoing firing spree. Most recently, Pete Heg says ouster of Army Chief of Staff General Randy George drew bipartisan outrage, according to Politico's reporting on the vote. More from their reporting, quote, the new requirement would mandate a report that describes the performance concerns, actions or inactions of that officer that are caused for such removal, transfer or relief of duty. Politico writes that the vote, quote, represents a rebuke of Pete Hegseth's personnel moves and the lack of information provided to Congress about the rationale for them. During an appearance before the committee in April, Pete Hegseth declined to give reasons for George's departure out of respect to these officers. We'll watch how this moves through Congress when we come back. Another new low for Donald Trump in the polls when the question is about his job performance as voters continue to reject him and the multiple spectacles vanity projects he's erecting all over Washington, D.C. and trying to market himself from the Oval Office. One more break. The next hour of deadline Whitehouse starts. After that.
- [44:05]
B
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