Bari Weiss, on "60 Minutes," uses Trump's tactics. It goes like this: take an institution that still enjoys public trust, appoint loyalists with no relevant experience to leadership positions, fire those who resist, dress the entire operation in the language of reform—fairness, innovation, a new direction—and defy anyone who tries to prove that you're actually running a racket.
For years before joining CBS News in October, Weiss built her career criticizing ideological uniformity and perceived institutional intolerance. However, during her brief tenure at the helm of the network's news division, she oversaw precisely the kind of purge and replacement operation that has become synonymous with Trumpism.
Donald Trump governs not through professionalism, but through loyalty and the suppression of dissent, appointing people to key positions whose main virtue is their inability to say "no" to him. Weiss has transferred this model to the most popular program on American television.
For nearly 60 years, "60 Minutes" stood out for its unwavering independence and determination to irritate the powerful. The steady, rhythmic ticking of the "60 Minutes" stopwatch was like the heartbeat of American investigative journalism. Week after week, the program proved that uncompromising, confrontational journalism was not only a civic necessity but also a commercially viable enterprise, regularly ranking first among all television programs and attracting an average of 9.1 million viewers per episode. By virtually every traditional metric, "60 Minutes" thrived.
But Weiss quickly rebuilt the organization in her own image. She joined CBS News in October, with no television experience, and was appointed editor-in-chief following Paramount's merger with Skydance, the production company owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle billionaire and Trump loyalist Larry Ellison. Once in place, Weiss surrounded herself with people whose resumes shared her signature traits: print media experience, no television experience, and an ideological comfort zone comfortable with the current administration. She brought in Adam Rubenstein, formerly of the New York Times and Free Press, as deputy editor-in-chief, and Charles Forrell, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, as managing editor.
The final blow to the independence of "60 Minutes" came on May 28 with a series of layoffs that effectively purged the CBS News staff. Among those fired was Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the program who replaced Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer who resigned in 2025, believing he no longer had the necessary editorial independence to do his job. Simon had led the program to impressive heights, delivering a 9 percent ratings increase year-over-year despite negative headlines and increasing video views by 2.5 billion across various social platforms.
While the specific reason for Simon's dismissal was not disclosed, the context is clear. In May, all of the show's correspondents reportedly wrote and signed a letter to Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks requesting that Simon be officially appointed executive producer of the show.
To replace the legendary producer Simon, Weiss appointed Nick Bilton, a former technology commentator and documentary filmmaker with no traditional television journalism background. Bilton's defense of his appointment mirrored the "fake it 'til you make it" approach that has characterized the Trump administration. In a welcome note to staff that at times read like standard Fox News drivel, he emptyly declared a commitment to "fairness" and "holding power accountable"—an insultingly inappropriate statement, given that his predecessor had just been fired for precisely that.
Bilton's vision for the show's future reads like a manifestation of techie authoritarianism. In an interview with Semaphore, he spoke glowingly of Ellison's ownership of the company, openly praising the idea of cross-departmental corporate synergy, comparing Paramount to Elon Musk's corporate network, where AI and battery technologies are shared by Tesla and SpaceX. Bilton also told the Hollywood Reporter that he plans to modernize the show with "some elements of gonzo journalism that I've been using." (In his 2021 documentary, Fake Fame, he cast three unknowns and attempted to turn them into social media influencers by creating lavish lifestyles for them and buying followers on social media platforms.)
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The firing of correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi is a case where Trumpist methodology becomes undeniable. Alfonsi had produced a story about Venezuelans sent to the notorious Secot prison in El Salvador. Weiss intervened, reportedly asking for the story to be changed to include more of the Trump administration's perspective. Alfonsi refused, arguing—correctly, as it turned out—that administration officials were refusing to appear on air and that any changes would negatively impact the network's reputation. The Washington Post reported that in an email to her team in April, Alfonsi had already described what was happening: Weiss was effectively "shutting down" the administration to prevent it from commenting on stories she didn't like. "I think it was a deliberate choice—to punish a journalist for refusing to 'filter' accurate reporting," Alfonsi told the New York Times of her firing. The story ultimately aired several weeks later, essentially unchanged and without the interviews with administration officials Weiss had demanded. Alfonsi's parting words, spoken in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, perfectly summed up the nightmare unfolding at CBS: "The arrogance, cruelty, and incompetence are astounding.".
This is a signature Trumpist tactic applied to journalism—censorship by capturing institutions, achieved by installing compliant leadership and then clearly announcing that journalists who resist will lose their jobs. Cecilia Vega, the program's first Latin American correspondent, was also fired as part of the recent purge, though her contract reportedly ran until March 2027. In her farewell statement, Vega claimed to have resisted "attempts to inject political bias into our reporting" and "censorship, both imposed and self-inflicted." CBS News denies these allegations.
Weiss, meanwhile, made a point of attending a private dinner in honor of Trump hosted by Paramount Skydance executives in Washington on April 23. The event, which included the president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—the architect of the administration's mass deportation policy—and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, came as Paramount Skydance awaits approval from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division for its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, completely upended the meaning of that tradition, highlighting the hostile relationship between the press and the government.
Weiss's dismissal means that the upcoming 59th season of "60 Minutes" will undergo a radical overhaul. The network's institutional memory has been completely erased, replaced by a management team that views journalism not as a constitutional mechanism to counter tyranny, but as a PR arm of the ruling class. If Weiss's track record at CBS remains unchanged—evening news ratings are declining, morning shows are in disarray, CBS Radio is shuttered—the numbers will follow.
It will go down in history as one of the most disastrous media management mistakes in recent memory: taking the number one program on American television, a show that was growing its audience and producing real journalism that exposed corruption, and remaking it in the image of an administration that despises everything it stood for.
The article "Bari Weiss Brings Trumpism to '60 Minutes'" first appeared on Salon.com.