Donald Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ interview: 7 major takeaways

Authors: Giulia Carbonaro

Publisher:

Newsweek

Published: 11/3/2025

Language:English

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Elon

Good morning Norris, I'm Elon, and this is Goose Pod for you. Today is Friday, November 07th.

Taylor Weaver

And I'm Taylor Weaver. We are here to discuss the major takeaways from Donald Trump’s recent ‘60 Minutes’ interview.

Elon

It was a fascinating piece of television, not just for what was said, but for what was edited out. The broadcast segment was only 27 minutes, but the full interview ran for nearly an hour and a half. They cut some of the most explosive parts.

Taylor Weaver

Exactly! The part that stood out to me was his pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. He pardons this crypto multi-billionaire and then claims, "I don’t know who he is." He immediately frames it as fighting a "Biden witch hunt." It's a masterclass in narrative control.

Elon

It's a calculated disruption. He’s signaling his support for the crypto industry while simultaneously playing the victim of the previous administration. Then, he pivots to defending ICE raids, stating they "haven’t gone far enough" and blaming "liberal judges" for holding them back. It’s pure provocation.

Taylor Weaver

He’s not just defending a policy, he's telling a story where he’s the only one willing to do what’s necessary, and any opposition is just part of a biased system. It’s incredibly divisive but, for his base, extremely effective.

Elon

To really understand his comments, especially on China, you have to look at the context. This interview didn't just happen in a bubble. Just last week, he was in South Korea meeting with President Xi Jinping, announcing a new era of closer trade ties. The goal was de-escalation.

Taylor Weaver

Right, but it was de-escalation on his terms. For decades, China has been strategically cornering the market on rare earth minerals. These are the elements that are absolutely essential for building everything from our phones to advanced military hardware. It was a long-term play they started 30 years ago.

Elon

And Trump walks onto the set of '60 Minutes' and declares that leverage is "gone, completely gone." He's positioning the deal as a complete neutralization of China's biggest economic weapon. He’s essentially claiming victory in a war that most people didn't even know was being fought so intensely.

Taylor Weaver

He’s building a narrative of strength. He even acknowledged that China had been accumulating these resources for decades while the U.S. lagged behind. But he projects a future where America is self-sufficient, saying, "Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon." It’s a promise of a future where that threat is obsolete.

Elon

It’s the same aggressive strategy he used with Paramount, the parent company of CBS. He sued them, settled for a reported $16 million, and then returned to their flagship news program to create his next headline. He turns adversaries into platforms.

Taylor Weaver

The entire interview felt like it was engineered to create conflict. Take his comments on the New York City mayoral race. He openly threatened to cut federal funding to the city if Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, wins the election. That’s an incredible escalation.

Elon

He called him a "Communist" and said sending money to a city he runs would be wasting it. He's not just engaging in political debate; he's using the power of the presidency to directly threaten millions of people for how they might vote in a local election. It’s a battle on all fronts.

Taylor Weaver

And it ties back to his ongoing war with the media. He fights with them, sues them, and then uses their airtime to his full advantage. It's a bizarre, combative, but symbiotic relationship. He knows they can't look away, and he leverages that attention perfectly.

Elon

The whole interview was full of these contradictions. Pardoning a man he claims not to know, attacking a candidate in a local election, and of course, framing every investigation into his actions as just another politically motivated "witch hunt." The conflict is the point.

Elon

You would think these kinds of statements would cause massive instability in the markets, but they’ve learned to price in the chaos. The big U.S.-China trade deal he discussed barely moved the needle on stocks because, as analysts noted, the good news was already anticipated. The market has adapted.

Taylor Weaver

The real impact isn't on the stock market, it's on the global stage and in domestic politics. Getting China to pause its export controls on rare earths gives our tech and defense sectors critical breathing room. But it's just a pause, a temporary truce that could end at any moment.

Elon

Exactly. The broader societal impact is the deepening of the political divide. His comments on ICE, on New York politics, they aren't meant to persuade the middle. They are designed to energize his supporters and outrage his opponents, forcing everyone to pick a side. It’s societal fission as a political tool.

Elon

He's also clearly looking to the future. When asked about running again in 2028, he deflected but made sure to highlight what he called a "strong bench," name-dropping potential successors like JD Vance and Marco Rubio. He’s already positioning himself as the kingmaker for the next election cycle.

Taylor Weaver

And the tech competition with China is only going to intensify. He recently made it clear that Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chips won't be sold to China. This is the new front line—not just trade, but a strategic battle for technological supremacy.

Elon

That's all the time we have for today. Thank you for listening to Goose Pod.

Taylor Weaver

See you tomorrow.

This podcast dissects Donald Trump's '60 Minutes' interview, highlighting his narrative control. Key takeaways include his Binance pardon claim, aggressive stance on ICE raids, and assertion of neutralizing China's rare earth mineral leverage. The discussion also covers his media combat strategy, threats to NYC funding, and positioning for future elections, emphasizing his divisive, conflict-driven approach.

Read original at Newsweek →

President Donald Trump spent nearly 90 minutes speaking to CBS ‘60 Minutes’ host Norah O’Donnell at his Florida residence of Mar-a-Lago on Friday, talking about the ongoing government shutdown, his vision for the country, and who will succeed him.It was Trump’s first sit-down interview with CBS News since, almost exactly a year ago, the president sued the news channel’s parent company Paramount for allegedly editing an interview with Kamala Harris in a way that he claimed was deceptive.

Paramount settled that lawsuit this summer for $16 million, without an apology or an admission of wrongdoing. The interview with O’Donnell was aired on Sunday. Here are the main highlights from the hour-and-a-half long conversation.1. Donald Trump Says China Won’t Be Able To Use Rare Earth Minerals Leverage for LongTrump and China’s President Xi Jinping met in South Korea last week, announcing closer trade ties between their two countries.

The U.S. president said he was cutting the "fentanyl tariff" on Chinese goods from 20 percent to 10 percent. In return, Xi said China would ease its chokehold on rare earth minerals, agreeing to delay the introduction of its latest round of export controls. During the 60 Minutes interview, Trump told O’Donnell that he "got sort of everything that we wanted" from the deal.

"We got-- no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone," he said."But-- we have-- billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have-- a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they're not alone in this), they've ripped us off from day one."

They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re-- it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top."

Trump also told O’Donnell that China won’t be able to use his dominance on the rare earth minerals sector for long. "The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and-- and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years. Other countries haven’t. Now we are.

I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be-- you know, it’s going to be-- it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon."2. Donald Trump Says U.S. Needs To Start Nuclear TestingLast week, Trump ordered the Pentagon to immediately resume testing of nuclear weapons, generating puzzlement among the public and officials.

In his interview with CBS News, he confirmed that he wants the U.S. to start testing nuclear weapons again to keep up with the countries which, he says, are already doing it."Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it. You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it.

We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are gonna report-- they don’t have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do. No, we’re gonna test, because they test and others test. And certainly North Korea's been testing. Pakistan’s been testing."We have the best, and I was the one that renovated them and built them during a four-year period.

And I hated to do it, because the destructive capability is something you don’t even wanna talk about. But if other people are gonna have ‘em, we’re gonna have to have ‘em."And if we have ‘em, we have to test ‘em, otherwise you don’t really know how they’re gonna work. And we don’t wanna ever use them."

3. Donald Trump Will Cut Down Funding to New York if Zohran Mamdani Wins The president spoke negatively about 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, who is the favorite to win New York City’s mayoral election on Tuesday, November 4. The latest polls give him ahead by several points over his rivals Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa.

Trump, as a New Yorker with strong financial ties to the city, told O’Donnell: "It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York. Because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there."Trump said he would rather have Cuomo winning in the city.

"So I don’t know that he’s won, and I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other, but if it’s gonna be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you."4. Donald Trump Dismisses War Against Venezuela Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration had identified targets in Venezuela including military facilities used to smuggle drugs, and the Miami Herald cited anonymous sources saying that the U.

S. was getting ready to strike them at any moment.While the latter report was dismissed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called it a "fake story," tensions have grown in the Caribbean over the weekend. "I wouldn’t be inclined to say that I would do that," Trump told O’Donnell after the 60 Minutes host asked him about the possibility of striking targets on the ground in Venezuela.

"But-- because I don’t talk to a reporter about whether or not I’m gonna strike. I’m not gonna-- you know, you're a wonderful reporter, you’re very talented, but I’m not gonna tell you what I’m gonna do with Venezuela, if I was gonna do it or if I wasn’t going to do it.Asked whether the country was going to war with Venezuela, Trump told O’Donnell: "I doubt it.

I don’t think so. But they’ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs—they’ve dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country that we didn’t want, people from prisons-- they emptied their prisons into our country."Trump, however, told O’Donnell that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro’s days are numbered.

5. Donald Trump Says ICE Has Not Gone Far EnoughConfronted about the tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) agents over the past few months, which have sparked protests across the country from Los Angeles to Chicago, Trump defended officers’ actions.O’Donnell asked Trump: "More recently, Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows.

Have some of these raids gone too far?"The president responded: "No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the-- by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama."6. Donald Trump Says He Does Not Know Who Changpeng Zhao Is, Despite Pardoning Him Despite pardoning him only last month, the president told O’Donnell he did not know who cryptocurrency multibillionaire Changpeng Zhao was."

I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt," he said. "But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up.

That’s my opinion. I was told about it," he added."I said, ‘Eh, it may look bad if I do it. I have to do the right thing.’ I don’t know the man at all. I don’t think I ever met him. Maybe I did. Or, you know, somebody shook my hand or something. But I don’t think I ever met him. I have no idea who he is.

I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration."Zhao, the co-founder of crypto exchange Binance, pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2023 and served four months in prison, while also stepping down as chief executive of the company.

Trump pardoned him last month, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying Zhao had been persecuted as part of the Biden administration "war on cryptocurrency"—a sector that Trump has strongly supported during his second term in the White House.7. Donald Trump Suggests Possible Successors for 2028Trump was also asked about rumors that he may run for a third term in 2028, which he himself has contributed to fueling, while never clearly saying whether he will or not seek reelection—despite the obstacle represented by the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment."

I don’t even think about it I will tell you, a lotta people want me to run. But the difference between us and the Democrats is we really do have a strong bench. I don’t wanna use names, because it’s, you know, inappropriate. But it’s too early. We’re talking three-and-a-quarter years," he said.Prompted to talk about Vice President JD Vance and Rubio, who have recently been mentioned as potential candidates for the 2028 presidential election, Trump said: "I do like JD Vance.

Or secretary Marco Rubio. I like so many people. We have an unbelievable bench. We could run two people together. We have a great bench."

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