Trump's '60 Minutes' interview flops with viewers as interest in president fades: report

A sit-down interview on “60 Minutes” with President Donald Trump after the Republican Party was humiliated in the midterm election failed to grab viewers.

Trump’s Sunday conversation with Ross Douthat pulled in 7.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel figures reported by The Wrap. Among “60 Minutes” episodes featuring Trump since 2015, only one drew a smaller crowd. Just 918,000 viewers were in the key 25-54 age group.

The interview was Trump’s first extended sit-down since voters handed Democrats both chambers of Congress. He acknowledged mistakes on immigration and on how his administration talked about the economy, but defended the Iran war and said he wouldn’t forgive his political enemies, The Wrap reported.

Audiences were far smaller than for his last big “60 Minutes” appearance. His November 2025 interview, which aired after a marquee Chiefs-Bills game, drew nearly 14 million viewers, so Sunday’s audience was down 44%. It edged out his April 2026 interview, which drew 7.4 million in the NFL offseason, by about 5%.

Even the previous week’s episode, which had no presidential interview, did better. The Nov. 1 broadcast reached 10.5 million viewers, about 26% more than Sunday’s, the report noted

Clips did better online, with The Wrap reporting 195 million views across the program’s social media accounts.

The weak TV showing comes during a difficult stretch for “60 Minutes” under CBS News chief Bari Weiss, whose overhaul of the program was supposed to boost its audience. Last month, the newsmagazine drew just 5.64 million viewers and 558,000 in the 25-54 demo, the first time since 2000 that the sixth episode of a season fell below 7 million total viewers and 1 million in the demo. In that key group, it was beaten by “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “The Price Is Right.”

“Bari and Nick [Bilton] and team have shown it actually can get worse,” a veteran TV executive told Status at the time.