Media

President Donald Trump attacked reporters as "dumb" and "stupid" during a rant about the ballroom he wants to build at the White House.

During a press gaggle outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump insisted that his ballroom project was under budget, even as Republicans in Congress sought to allocate $1 billion to help fund its construction after the president said it would be paid for with $400 million in donations.

CBS News chief Bari Weiss has intensified her contentious overhaul of "60 Minutes," directly inserting herself into high-profile booking decisions and pushing aside longtime correspondent Lesley Stahl — a move that has sparked internal hostility and raised questions about whether the legendary outlet is being dismantled from within.

According to media watchdog Status, Stahl had been pursuing an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for months. However, Weiss personally stepped in and handed the interview to Major Garrett — a CBS News correspondent who does not work for "60 Minutes" and whose only dedicated platform is on the network's little-watched streaming service.

"But behind the scenes, Status has learned that famed '60 Minutes' correspondent Lesley Stahl had also been gunning for the interview but was upstaged by CBS News boss Bari Weiss, who booked Netanyahu herself and handed the interview to Garrett," Oliver Darcy of Status is reporting. "The move sparked hostility and amplified the already strained relationship between Weiss and the reporting team at the iconic newsmagazine."

The report notes that a CBS News spokesperson did not dispute the reporting but defended the decision, telling Status: "It's the editor in chief's job to make decisions about bookings and interviews. Major is a world-class journalist and did a tough, fair, and newsmaking interview."

Weiss' intervention into booking decisions extends beyond the Netanyahu interview. In March, she personally booked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for a CBS News interview and assigned it to Garrett, directing it to air on "60 Minutes" — highly unusual for a program that typically reserves major interviews for its own correspondents.

Internal sentiment at "60 Minutes" reflects deep frustration, the report states. When correspondents learned Netanyahu had agreed to appear on the program but the assignment went to Garrett instead of Stahl, tensions escalated rapidly. The feeling inside was that Netanyahu had effectively circumvented Stahl and the "60 Minutes" team — with Weiss facilitating the end-run by providing an interviewer he apparently found more agreeable.

According to Darcy, the decisions reveal how Weiss fundamentally views "60 Minutes": not as an autonomous program with its own traditions and correspondent hierarchy, but as a high-profile platform for CBS News' broader reporting portfolio and does not subscribe to the idea that "60 Minutes" must maintain rigid internal traditions and is expected to dismantle many of them.

Darcy observed that the approach risks undermining the program's identity. "60 Minutes" has maintained its stature and ratings dominance for decades precisely because of institutional traditions and correspondent prestige.

A MAGA host who was secretly funded by Russia recently argued that influencers should not be able to receive foreign money without registering as a lobbyist.

During an interview on Monday, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) told host Benny Johnson about his legislation that would ban dual citizens from serving in Congress.

The White House social media team lashed out at a Reuters correspondent who shared a photo of President Donald Trump with his eyes closed.

Following a White House event on Monday, Reuters correspondent Idrees Ali posted a photo in which the president appeared to be resting his eyes.

The pro-MAGA Real America's Voice network celebrated women for Mother's Day by calling for male "providers" and "protectors."

During a Monday segment about Mother's Day, host Gina Loudon spoke to Kimberly Fletcher, CEO of Moms for America, a conservative organization.

White House adviser Stephen Miller's romantic history at Duke University tells a starkly different story than the one he promotes today as a hardline immigration hawk.

During his time as a political science student, Miller reportedly dated an attractive light-skinned conservative Latina woman, though according to accounts from their dormmates, the relationship was notably one-sided.

The Washington Post, already buffeted by a massive exodus of subscribers dating back to when Jeff Bezos pulled the plug on a 2024 endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to be president, attempted to stop the bleeding with a YouTube podcast that has failed miserably, according to media watchdog Status.

On Sunday night, Natalie Korach of Status reported that the struggling Post, which has undergone massive turnover due to departures by top reporters and columnists, followed by substantial layoffs, went to the expense of creating a podcast studio for members of the remaining editorial board to broadcast their takes on the topics of the day.

Fox Business host Dagen McDowell warned that Americans had "every right to be upset" because President Donald Trump's second term had "gone the wrong way."

During a Friday panel discussion, McDowell agreed with contributor Steve Forbes that Trump was right to pursue fraud within the government. Still, she insisted that alone was not enough to turn the economy around.

A New York man said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents admitted that they had the wrong person after he was beaten on the street in the Bronx.

Jeury Concepcion, 19, told WNBC that he had to get stitches and suffered a concussion after his encounter with ICE on Wednesday.

Former Fox News contributor Sean Duffy revealed that he spent seven months making a reality show while serving the country as Secretary of Transportation.

In a Friday interview on Fox News, Duffy and his wife, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, announced their new program called "The Great American Road Trip."

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently celebrated the removal of food stamps from 4.5 million Americans.

During an interview with Newsmax host Rob Finnerty this week, Rollins seemed jubilant about her success in moving people off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

A Catholic cardinal who appears frequently on Fox News condemned President Donald Trump's repeated attacks on Pope Leo.

After Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with the pope this week, Cardinal Timothy Dolan spoke out against the U.S. president's claim that the Catholic leader was "weak on crime" because he opposed wars like the conflict in Iran.