The Conversation (0)
60 Minutes
US president Donald Trump was back on 60 Minutes this week, and the interview with Norah O’Donnell was filled with the ridiculousness many of us have come to expect from the convicted felon.
And so, to spare you the 20 minutes (or 73 minutes, if you wanted to watch the extended version for some reason), we’ve rounded up the key moments from their conversation.
Failing to outline his plans for healthcare reform
During the interview, Trump was confronted by O’Donnell over his long-promised healthcare reform, a pledge he’s repeated since 2015.
When asked why he still hasn’t delivered a concrete plan, Trump deflected, calling Obamacare “a total disaster” and insisted Democrats are to blame saying “all they have to do is let the country open and we'll fix it.”
O’Donnell pushed back, noting that he has made the same claim for nearly a decade without details.
Claiming he is ‘much better looking’ than New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani
The Republican - so often described as having an “orange” face by critics – said at one point that he thinks he is a “much better looking person” than Mamdani, the Democrat candidate running to be the next mayor of New York.
The same 60 Minutes interview also saw Trump express a preference for independent candidate Andrew Cuomo to win this week’s election.
He said: “I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other, but if it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”
Mamdani describes himself as a democratic socialist, not a communist, and academics have denied that the 33-year-old is one based on the ideology’s definition.
Insisting he is the ‘opposite’ of a Nazi
US president Donald Trump has been accused of fascism on a number of occasions (just last week, in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg for the BBC, former presidential rival Kamala Harris wasted no time answering if she still believed the Republican was a “fascist”), and the White House has strongly denied such a claim.
"There is no greater defender of freedom than President Trump, who signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office, ended the weaponization of justice, restored over 400 press passes to the White House complex, and takes media questions daily,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told indy100 back in April.
Now, this week, Trump told O’Donnell that his opponents “call me a Nazi all the time”.
He continued: “I’m not a Nazi; I’m the opposite. I’m somebody who’s saving our country, but they call me ‘Nazi’.
“They have talking points. They’re just talking points, and the press is largely responsible for it.”
Telling O’Donnell she is ‘wrong’ when she pointed out grocery prices are up
At one point, Trump clashed with the reporter over the state of US grocery prices.
When O’Donnell pointed out that “grocery prices are up,” Trump immediately pushed back, insisting, “No, you’re wrong. They went up under Biden. Right now they’re going down… our groceries are down.”
However, fact-checkers quickly noted that U.S. grocery prices have continued to rise, contradicting Trump’s claim. Average grocery prices rose 0.3% from August to September, according to Consumer Price Index figures. It's thought that grocery prices in September were around 2.7% higher than they were a year ago.
Saying he ‘doesn’t know’ man he just pardoned
The convicted felon said that he ‘doesn’t know’ who Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is.
This is pretty bizarre, given that CZ was pardoned by Trump just 10 days ago.
Back in 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme and agreed to step down as the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. He served four months in prison.
In a statement issued on 23 October, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency.
“In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden administration pursued Mr Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.”
Despite this, when O’Donnell asked him about Zhao, Trump replied: “OK, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.
“I know that… the four-month sentence, or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.
“Here’s the thing: I know nothing about it, because I’m too busy doing the other…”
Seemingly (once again) confusing asylum seekers with ‘insane asylums’
And when O’Donnell asked Trump if the US was going to war against Venezuela, the Republican replied: “I doubt it, I don’t think so, but they’ve been treating us very badly.
“They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums into the United States of America.”
It’s prompted social media users to once again claim Trump does not know the difference between psychiatric institutions and asylum seekers.
Good lord…
Why not read...
- You can no longer criticise Trump for one weird reason - apparently
- Trump says royal family in 'tragic situation' as Andrew loses titles
Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter
How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel
Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
Top 100
