Elon Musk has come around to his boss' way of thinking, trashing CBS' "60 Minutes" and saying that the team behind the program deserves to be jailed.
Musk's dander was up after the long-running newsmagazine shared a promotion of their segment on the proposed slashing of federal funding for USAID. Reporter Scott Pelley began the segment wondering "how serious President [Donald] Trump is in defiance of the Constitution." In a later clip, a Republican former administrator of the aid agency denied Musk's claims of widespread waste. He said on Sunday that USAID is "the most accountable aid agency in the world.”
When "60 Minutes" posted about their story on Musk-owned X, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency replied to call them liars.
"60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election," he wrote. "They deserve a long prison sentence."
60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
They deserve a long prison sentence. https://t.co/de20vXO62X
That allegation of election interference appears to be a reference to their pre-election interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. After CBS aired different edits of a portion of the interview, Trump accused the network of intentionally meddling with the then-upcoming presidential election. He sued the network for $10 billion.
Trump filed that lawsuit in the conservative Northern District of Texas, a move that CBS called judge-shopping in a request to dismiss the case. Though CBS' parent company Paramount has appeared open to settling the case, "60 Minutes" recently made the unprecedented move of sharing all of their recordings from the Harris interview.
"In reporting the news, journalists regularly edit interviews – for time, space or clarity. In making these edits, '60 Minutes' is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public – all while working within the constraints of broadcast television," they wrote at the time.
