’60 Minutes’ pulls segment on CECOT Trump Administration prison
About three hours before “60 Minutes” was set to air a program detailing “cruel and tortuous conditions” at a prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported suspected illegal immigrants for detention, the CBS News program abruptly announced it would postpone the broadcast.
The move came after President Trump complained two weeks ago about what he perceived as unfair treatment by “60 Minutes” — claiming that since David Ellison and his father, wealthy Trump supporter Larry Ellison, took over Paramount (the parent company of CBS), “60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”
Last week, Trump criticized the Ellisons again on “60 Minutes,” writing in a Dec. 16 post on his Truth Social account: “For those people who think I have a good relationship with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover’ than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I would hate to see my enemies!”
In an announcement on Sunday, “60 Minutes” shared an “Editor’s Note” that read: “The broadcasts for tonight’s edition of ’60 Minutes’ have been updated. Our ‘Inside CECOT’ report will air in a future broadcast.” The statement was posted on social media around 4:30 PM ET on Sunday. The episode was scheduled to air at 7:30 PM ET (or after the end of NFL coverage on CBS).
When asked why the segment was postponed, a CBS News spokesperson said, “The ’60 Minutes’ report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air on a future broadcast. We determined additional reporting was necessary.”
The segment, as previously announced, would feature correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing deportees the Trump administration has sent to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador.
According to the US-based National Immigration Law Center, in March and April 2025, the US government sent more than 280 young men to CECOT, “a foreign prison notorious for torture, in secret, without notice to their loved ones or lawyers. There they were held incommunicado and tortured.” Four months later, 252 of these men were released from prison and “sent to their native Venezuela (specifically a country where some of the men had originally fled for fear of persecution).”
Earlier this month, Trump denounced Lesley Stahl’s December 7 interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), the former Trump supporter who has recently been critical of the president on a range of issues. The president wrote on Truth Social that the “Trump-hating” Stahl “interviewed a very ill-prepared traitor, who in her confusion made many truly stupid statements.”
Trump continued, “My real problem with the show, however, was not the low IQ traitor, but that 60 Minutes’ new owner, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD PROPERTY.” Trump also pointed out that Paramount Global, in an effort to close the deal with Skydance Media, paid the president $16 million this summer to settle his lawsuit over an October 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed was deceptively redacted, causing him personal harm and constituting interference in the 2024 election.
On Sunday, in lieu of the report on CECOT, “60 Minutes” aired a segment from correspondent Jon Wertheim described as follows: “Jon Wertheim travels to Nottingham, England, to visit the Kanneh-Mason family – seven siblings, each under thirty, all celebrated classical musicians whose talent is truly music to their ears. Supporting each other in harmony as they take the world stage, this extraordinary septet is, as Wertheim discovers, an orchestra larger than the sum of its parts.”
Sunday’s ’60 Minutes’ also featured a double segment about ‘The Sherpas of Everest’, for which correspondent Cecilia Vega went to Everest Base Camp led by a 19-year-old Sherpa.
