Trump Gets Defensive in ’60 Minutes’ Interview After Norah O’Donnell Reads From Suspect’s Manifesto, Calls Her a “Disgrace”
A subdued — and, at one point, defensive — President Donald Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell for an interview that aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes to share his perspective of what happened in the moments after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Allen reportedly emailed a “manifesto” to his family moments before the attack, saying he was targeting members of the Trump administration.
Asked if he thought he was the target, Trump told O’Donnell: “I don’t know. It sounded, to me — I read a manifesto — [that] he’s radicalized. He was a Christian, believer, and then he became an anti-Christian, and he had a lotta change. He’s been going through a lot, based on what he wrote. His brother complained about him and I think reported him to the police. And his sister, likewise, complained about him. His family was very concerned. He was probably a pretty sick guy.”
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When O’Donnell started reading from the gunman’s alleged manifesto, the interview got tense. She read this quote, alleged written by the suspect: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Trump, visibly annoyed, replied: “Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
Interjected O’Donnell: “Oh, you think — do you think he was referring to you?”
Replied Trump: “I’m not a pedophile. Excuse me. Excuse me. I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person? I got associated with all — stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview and they’ll probably’ — I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”
Said O’Donnell: “Mr. President, these are the gunman’s words — “
Trump continued: “And I was never — excuse me. Excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes. You’re a disgrace. But go ahead. Let’s finish the interview.”
When O’Donnell added that the suspect reportedly wrote in his manifesto that the hotel had what he perceived to be a lack of security (“Like, this level of incompetence is insane”), Trump replied: “Well, he was pretty incompetent too, because he got caught. And he got caught pretty easily. So I’d say he was pretty incompetent too. You know, I can take any event having to do with security or anything else. I can always find fault. Those guys did a good job last night. They did a really good job.”
Trump added that he wants the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to be rescheduled, ideally within the next 30 days.
“I don’t want to see it be canceled. … I think it’s really bad for a crazy person to be able to cancel something like this,” he said, adding: “There are great people in the press too I can name, but I don’t want to — I don’t want to embarrass your show. We have some great people in the press, some very fair people, and people that are just on my side. But for the most part, it’s a very liberal or very progressive– let’s use the word liberal. Liberal press. But I was just really … happy to see the — I don’t know how long it’ll last — the relationship, the friendship, the spirit after a very bad event took place. Now, the event turned out to be much less bad because nobody was killed. Nobody was hurt.”
When O’Donnell told Trump that the “White House Correspondents’ Association very much appreciates you going last night and honoring a commitment to do it again,” he replied: “I hope we’re going to do it again. Norah, tell ’em to get it going, and we should do it within 30 days, and they’ll have even more security, and they’ll have bigger perimeter security. It’ll be fine. But tell ’em to do it again. We can’t let something be — it’s not that I wanna go; it’s no, I’m very busy; I don’t need that — I think it’s very important that they do it again.”
As the event got under way Saturday night at the Washington Hilton, a gunman reportedly charged through a security checkpoint and into ballroom where the event was taking place armed with multiple weapons. He fired multiple shots before being subdued by authorities. He was later identified as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California.
In a press briefing, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Allen will be charged with using a firearm and assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon and that there will likely be “many more charges” to come.
O’Donnell noted to Trump that the scened looked “chaotic” as Secret Service rushed to protect both the president and Vice President J.D. Vance on Saturday night.
“Well, what happened is — it was a little bit me,” Trump said. “I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn’t making it that easy for ’em. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one. And different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. I was surrounded by great people. And I probably made them act a little bit more slowly. I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Lemme see. Wait a minute.'”
Asked to clarify what he meant, Trump said he started walking with the Secret Service and then they told him to “go down on the floor.” He said both he and First Lady Melania Trump complied.
The reason he was asked to “go down,” he said, was because he was “walking out pretty tall” and they wanted him protected.
Trump previously said a Secret Service agent had been shot but was wearing a bulletproof vest. He told O’Donnell that the agent is “a hundred percent” OK.
“He didn’t want to go to the hospital,” Trump said. “He really didn’t. They asked him to go, and … he didn’t want to go. He said, ‘I don’t need to go to the hospital.’ But he went because they asked him to go.”
Trump added that he “wasn’t worried” that there would be injuries: “I understand life. We live in a crazy world.” When the president realized what was happening, “my thought was, ‘You know, I’ve been through this before a couple of times.’ ” Melania, however, “has not to this extent. She handled it great. I mean, she’s very strong, smart. She got it. She knew what was happening.”
Trump also noted that the suspect “like a blur” as he was racing into the ballroom and praised the Secret Service for reacting quickly. “I think the NFL should sign him up. He was fast,” Trump said. “When you look at it on tape, it’s almost like a blur. But it was amazing ’cause as soon as they saw that you could see them draw their guns. They were so professional. Aimed their guns, and then they took him down immediately.”
Trump’s interview with O’Donnell will be broadcast Sunday night on 60 Minutes, which airs at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and Paramount+.
Carly Thomas contributed to this report.
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