President Trump defended his administration’s ICE raids and argued “they haven’t gone far enough” in a “60 Minutes” interview that airs Sunday night – his first sitdown with CBS News since suing the network.
Trump swatted away criticism about his immigration crackdown and blamed “liberal judges” for getting in the way after CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell asked if he felt “some of these raids” have gone too far.
President Trump spoke with “60 Minutes” for an interview airing Sunday night.CBS
“No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back…by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama,” Trump responded, according to a preview of the interview.
“Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows,” O’Donnell said during the sitdown that was filmed Friday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“You’re okay with those tactics?” O’Donnell then asked.
“Yeah, because you have to get the people out,” Trump insisted.
The administration has faced a number of legal challenges in connection to its deportation tactics, including in Illinois – where a Biden-appointed federal judge blocked Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago.
In another preview of the high-profile sitdown, Trump again waded into the Big Apple mayor’s race and blasted “communist” frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.
Norah O’Donnell sat down with the president for the interview.CBS
“He’s far worse than a socialist,” the president said.
O’Donnell then questioned Trump about apparent similarities between him and Mamdani.
“Some people have described him as a left-wing version of you … charismatic, breaking the old rules. What do you think about that?” she asked, according to the clip.
“Well, I think I’m a much better looking person than him, right?” Trump joked.
Trump told O’Donnell the ICE raids “haven’t gone far enough.”CBS
The “60 Minutes” interview comes just weeks after Bari Weiss, a former opinion editor for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times who founded the Free Press, took the helm as Editor-in-Chief of the network.
Trump had sued CBS parent company Paramount over a 2024 “60 Minutes” segment featuring then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Back in July, Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit that alleged the Harris interview was deceptively edited to benefit his opponent during the 2024 campaign.
Amid the furious debate over the government shutdown and the incoming freeze of SNAP food benefits, one important factor is often overlooked - Why are 42 million Americans, a number larger than the entire population of Canada, dependent on government subsidized groceries? Isn't this a time bomb waiting to explode regardless of a federal shutdown?
There have been a few temporary food stamp programs from the Great Depression through the 1950s, but they were limited in scale and funding was minimal. It wasn't until LBJ's "Great Society" project in 1964 that food stamps slowly became a permanent mainstay of American life. By 1969, food benefits were in full swing, yet, only 1.4% of the population used them. Strict eligibility requirements kept the participation rate down until 1977.
Candidates had to have a gross income below the poverty line. Their liquid assets (including vehicles) had to have limited value. They had to put some of their own money into a portion of the stamps in order to get the "bonus" stamps. Able bodied adults without children were largely excluded. College students and immigrants were barred from the program. Able bodied adults had to work or be in training. Monthly income and expense verification was required. Food stamps were paper, creating a "shame factor". Just because someone was under the poverty line did not mean they could qualify.
Most of these barriers have been absent from SNAP in the past few decades, which is why the percentage of users spiked from 1.4% to as high as 15% of the population. Today, the rate stands at 12.5%, which is still extraordinarily high. Approximately 19 million SNAP users have been on the program for longer than a year, and over 80% of people on the program are able bodied and below retirement age.
In other words, the program has become a crutch for a vast number of people who do not need it.
The most common argument in favor of expanding food subsidies is: "What about the single moms?" Around 25% of all SNAP users are single mothers, and yes, it is increasingly difficult for these women to work full time without child care. However, while there are plenty of cases of desperate moms in need of a boost in times of hardship, there are also endless cases of abuse of the system.
The "EBT moms" problem is pervasive - Women who game the government (and the taxpayer) by deliberately having multiple children with multiple men and refusing to keep a father in the picture with the expectation that they will be able to live off a multitude of welfare programs. Many of these women live practically for free on the taxpayer's dime; this was their life plan from the beginning.
Food subsidies have had the unfortunate side effect of helping to destroy the nuclear family, creating generations of fatherless children and skyrocketing crime rates. Around 23% of all US households have single mothers. Among black families, 47% are single mother households, 25% in Hispanic households and 12% in white households. Approximately 7% of white families use SNAP, while 27% of black families and 23% of Hispanic families use SNAP.
There is a clear trend here: Single mothers and minority families are the largest contingent of welfare beneficiaries per capita and the system is almost designed to reward their dependency.
This does not mean that SNAP needs to be shut down entirely - There are a lot of people out there in legitimate need. If the program was relegated to the elderly, the disabled, and short term support for people in emergencies, then the cost could be reduced dramatically. The fact that 80% of food stamp users are able bodied and under 60 years of age is mind boggling. Not to mention the 1.8 million non-citizens that took SNAP in 2024 (the same people that "don't exist" according to Democrats).
The solution is to end the idea that food stamps need to act as a permanent safety net or entitlement program. Instead, they should be treated as a short term stop-gap until citizens in need can get back on their feet.
Work requirements, reduced funding for young and able bodied participants, making people pay a deposit on EBT before they get access to benefits, and limiting the number of children a parent can claim in exchange for SNAP could not only change the landscape of government spending, it could also dramatically reduce a number of social problems associated with single mother households. Take away easy access to SNAP, and watch the number of single mothers plummet.
As for the overall population, The US spends over $100 billion annually on food subsidies, the largest food welfare program of any nation in the world. No other single country comes close. Perhaps greater attention needs to be paid to who qualifies for this program, with far more requirements and obstacles in place.
The director of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research was placed on administrative leave on Friday, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
George Tidmarsh told the newspaper that he was placed on leave after raising concerns about the legal basis of a new program for the rapid approval of some new drugs.
As we've for many monthsbeen documenting, theWestern mainstream media continues the trend of turning on Ukraine, and on President Zelensky in particular, now that it's clear that 'victory' against Russia will not be a reality. It seems that every time Ukraine's military suffers major setback and defeat at a strategic location in the east - as isagain unfolding currently- the unusually 'negative' MSM articles suddenly appear.
It wasn't very long ago, and especially during the opening couple years of war, the MSM treated any criticisms of Zelensky or the Ukrainian Army as totally off-limits. This was the comically absurd era of concert halls in Europe canceling famous classical Russian ballads, or op-eds calling for reading courses to ban Dostoevsky. But fast-forward to late 2025 and Politico is out with a story entitled The dark side of Zelenskyy’s rule.
The story documents how Ukrainian society, and especially what's left of the 'accepted opposition' (after long ago Zelensky banned all opposition political parties deemed too 'pro-Russian' in a country where some one-third of the population has Russian as their first language) is slowly turning on the US/EU-backed leader.
Discontent has boiled to the public surface on a variety of issues of late including harsh recruitment policies which has seen officers throw unsuspecting men on the street into vans, and then there's Zelensky's personal efforts which sought to ban top corruption investigative institutions (later reversed after severe censure from the public and Western countries), and most recently there's the political persecution of Zelensky's enemies.
Execution of the war itself has also been a source of immense controversy, especially after in early 2024 President Zelensky sacked Ukraine's top general, who was also very popular among military ranks - Valery Zaluzhny - in what marked the biggest shakeup of the country’s military leadership since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. Zaluzhny was shipped off to be ambassador to the United Kingdom, and some say he might be groomed by the West to eventually replace Zelensky.
The NY Times has recently observed this proved a disaster, as "Ukraine was successful the first year of the war because its army fought differently. Once Zelensky replaced Zaluzhny with Syrsky last year, it has turned into a war of a small Soviet army against a big Soviet army, with predictable consequences." Leadership became "mired in Soviet-decision making" and forces were no longer nimble or effective, and needless losses mounted.
But Politico, now in documenting more of the 'dark side of Zelensky' highlights the case of another popular Ukrainian figure under fire by the Zelensky government:
As Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, then head of Ukraine’s state-owned national power company Ukrenergo, was scrambling to keep the lights on.
Somehow, he succeeded and continued to do so every year, earning the respect of energy executives worldwide by ensuring the country was able to withstand Russian missile and drone strikes on its power grid and avoid catastrophic blackouts — until he was abruptly forced to resign in 2024, that is.
Kudrytskyi’s dismissal was decried by many in the energy industry and also prompted alarm in Brussels. At the time, Kudrytskyi told POLITICO he was the victim of the relentless centralization of authority that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his powerful head of office Andriy Yermak often pursue. He said he feared “corrupt individuals” would end up taking over the state-owned company.
According to his supporters, it is that kind of talk — and his refusal to remain silent — that explains why Kudrytskyi ended up in a glass-enclosed cubicle in a downtown Kyiv courtroom last week, where he was arraigned on embezzlement charges.
In the background, Zelensky's motives have further increasingly come under scrutiny for his refusal to hold elections, declaring that martial law policy will remain in effect so long as the war drags on.
In the meantime he's been able to amass unprecedented power for himself, while wielding a bludgeon against his internal enemies in Kiev. Politico continues, using word choice which earlier in the conflict no mainstream media account of the Ukrainian political landscape would dare employ:
Others who have received the same treatment include Zelenskyy’s predecessor in office, Petro Poroshenko, who was sanctioned and arraigned on corruption charges this year — a move that could prevent him from standing in a future election. Sanctions have frequently been threatened or used against opponents, effectively freezing assets and blocking the sanctioned person from conducting any financial transactions, including using credit cards or accessing bank accounts.
Poroshenko has since accused Zelenskyy of creeping “authoritarianism,” and seeking to “remove any competitor from the political landscape.”
While we and a few others have long been documenting such 'creeping authoritarianism' - Western press has by and large ignored these loud statements from frustrated Ukrainian officials who have been sidelined. There's been a media atmosphere which views these narratives with suspicion and as too Russian-sympathetic, even when it is (awkwardly) top Ukrainians themselves saying it.
As for Kudrytskyi, and his case wherein state prosecutors claim he personally enriched himself while overseeing the country's energy company, Politico cites official after official who insists there's no evidence - and indeed such has never been presented publicly either:
Kaleniuk was in the courtroom for Kudrytskyi’s two-hour arraignment, and echoes the former energy boss’s claim that the prosecution is “political.” According to Kaleniuk, the case doesn’t make any legal sense, and she said it all sounded “even stranger” as the prosecutor detailed the charges against Kudrytskyi: “He failed to show that he had materially benefited in any way” from an infrastructure contract that, in the end, wasn’t completed, she explained.
The case in question is related to a contract Kudrytskyi authorized seven years ago as Ukrenergo’s then-deputy director for investments. But the subcontractor didn’t even begin work on the assigned infrastructure improvements, and Ukrenergo was able to claw back an advance payment that was made.
His firing long ago had actually prompted resignations from two independent members of the company's supervisory board, and the whole saga was met with rare criticism in pro-Kiev media outlets within Ukraine at the time.
Meanwhile, another under-acknowledged reality in Ukraine is that there's a sizeable silent minority (or even majority, perhaps) of the common populace who wants to see this tragic war end in any way possible, even if that means ceding the Russian-speaking territories in the Donbass and Crimea, something which Zelensky and his hawkish backers in Europe consistently refuse as a possibility. These common voices too have been silenced and sidelined in Zelensky's Ukraine.
