President Donald Trump speaks during a 60 Minutes interview, April 26, 2026 (Image: Screengrab via 60 Minutes)
President Donald Trump's most recent interview with 60 Minutes devolved into a disaster, and according to a new breakdown from The i Paper, it exposed his "greatest weakness" in the process.
Trump's interview with the CBS program aired on Sunday, just a day removed from the chaotic incident that saw the White House Correspondents' Dinner shut down by an attempted shooting. Despite his insistence that he was not fazed by the latest attempt on his life —chalking it up to the reality of being an "impactful" president — he later became noticeably rattled when interview Norah O'Donnell read out a portion of the suspect's manifesto.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes," the suspect wrote, per the portion that O'Donnell read during the interview.
“You’re horrible people,” he said. “I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody… I’m not a pedophile," Trump lashed out in response. "You read that crap from some sick person?”
Writing about the caustic exchange for The i Paper on Monday, British journalist James Ball noted that O'Donnell "barely" scratched the surface, and detailed the "long trail" of evidence against Trump
"In reality, O’Donnell barely pressed Trump on any of these points," Ball wrote. "A New York court held in a 2023 civil case that Trump had sexually abused the writer E Jean Carroll. He was caught on camera boasting about grabbing girls 'by the p——.' There is a long trail of documentary evidence detailing Trump’s enduring and close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein — including that some of Epstein’s victims were recruited from the President’s Mar-a-Lago country club."
Ball further argued that, in lashing out so defensively against the manifesto, Trump inadvertently showed his "weaknesses" amid his attempts to show strength.
"Trump might have shown that he doesn’t fear assassins, but he showed up his weaknesses at the same time," Ball explained. "He is still all too aware that Epstein could bring down his voting coalition, and he is too angry and thin-skinned to respond to it with anything other than irritation, peevishness or fury."
He concluded. "The President surrounds himself with sycophants, who flatter him and make sure he only sees the news they want him to see. Trump is so used to being cossetted that he can no longer handle even the softest of pushbacks. He knows that his links to Epstein have caused him unprecedented harm within the MAGA ecosystem, now compounded by controversy over his actions in Iran. He wants his critics silenced."
