President Trump declined to say if the U.S. would strike Venezuela, insisted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids could go further and defended his pardon of a crypto billionaire in a wide-ranging and, at times, contentious interview on “60 Minutes.”
The interview, which aired Sunday night, was conducted by Norah O’Donnell at Mar-a-Lago on Friday and came after Mr. Trump successfully sued the network’s owner over what he called a deceptively edited interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election.
CBS aired 27 minutes of the interview with Mr. Trump on its venerable news program and, later, released the full 73-minute-long interview online.
Mr. Trump declined to say whether the U.S. military would strike Venezuela, but said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s reign would be coming to an end soon. The U.S. has amassed warships and fighter jets off the coast of Venezuela, which Mr. Trump has alleged is trafficking drugs into the U.S.
When asked if the U.S. would strike Venezuela, Mr. Trump declined to say.
“I’m not saying it’s untrue. … I don’t talk to a reporter about whether or not I’m gonna strike,” he said.
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Mr. Trump also said, “I doubt it. I don’t think so,” when Ms. O’Donnell asked if a war with Venezuela was possible but agreed that Mr. Maduro’s time as president was “numbered.”
Mr. Maduro has denied that his country is involved in drug trafficking. In the last two months, the U.S. has carried out several strikes against vessels the Trump administration asserted were bringing drugs into the U.S., killing more than 60 people.
Mr. Trump defended the ICE raids as Ms. O’Donnell ticked off some troubling incidents, including video of agents tackling a young mother, the dispersal of tear gas in Chicago and car windows being smashed.
“I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held [back] by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama,” he said.
When asked if he was “OK” with ICE’s handling of the raids, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, you have to get the people out.”
He also said that the raids are targeting violent criminals and the mentally ill, saying among those detained are “murderers,” “killers” or people “from insane asylums.
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“We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be ‘you came into the country illegally, you’re gonna go out,” he said.
Mr. Trump also insisted he didn’t know Changpeng Zhao, a cryptocurrency billionaire whom he pardoned last month. Mr. Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to charges related to money laundering in connection with his crypto exchange platform, Binance.
In May, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, struck a deal in which one of its crypto coins will be used in a $2 billion transaction between Binance and MGX.
“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’ and what I want to do is see crypto [succeed] because if we don’t do it, it’s going to go to China,” he said.
Mr. Trump also noted his successful lawsuit against CBS News and “60 Minutes,” noting that they had to pay him “a lot of money.” Mr. Trump last year sued Paramount, then-owner of CBS, for $16 million, alleging it hurt his election chances by airing two different versions of Ms. Harris’s answer to a question on “60 Minutes.”
“And actually ’60 Minutes’ paid me a lot of money. And you don’t have to put this on because I don’t want to embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” he said.
Mr. Trump then referenced CBS hiring Bari Weiss as its new editor-in-chief of its news division.
“I think you have a great new leader, frankly, because the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is great, from what I know, I don’t know her but hear she’s a great person,” he said.
“But ‘60 Minutes’ was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad.” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Harris interview.
