The President sat down with O’Donnell to discuss alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter Cole Allen.

Donald Trump equates CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell to ‘any woman off the street’ over *60 Minutes *interview

The President sat down with O'Donnell to discuss alleged White House Correspondents' Dinner shooter Cole Allen.

By Sharareh Drury

May 5, 2026 2:28 p.m. ET

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Donald Trump, Norah O'Donnell. Credit:

- Donald Trump said of CBS News Senior Correspondent Norah O’Donnell "I could get any woman off the street" to "do just as good a job" after her *60 Minutes* interview with him on April 26.

- The president took issue with O'Donnell for quoting the manifesto of alleged White House Correspondents' Dinner shooter Cole Allen.

- "There's nothing special," Trump said of O'Donnell and her interview.

Donald Trump is slamming CBS News Senior Correspondent Norah O’Donnell over their recent *60 Minutes* interview.

In an interview with the Salem News Channel on Monday, Trump criticized the journalist for her line of questioning, including citing the manifesto of suspected White House Correspondents' Dinner shooter Cole Allen.

"She's terrible. I mean, she's interviewed me before. She's a regular person that gets paid a lot of money," Trump told host Hugh Hewitt. "She's no different — I could get any woman off the street, practically, and they would do just as good a job as her. There's nothing special.”

When asked if he had considered walking out of the interview, Trump quipped, "No, because then you make it a bigger story, actually."

O'Donnell with Trump on '60 Minutes'.

The president sat down for a lengthy interview with O'Donnell following the shooting at the dinner staged by the White House Correspondents’ Association on April 25. During the interview, O'Donnell asked Trump about Allen's manifesto, specifically the alleged gunman's rationalization that he was "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes."

Trump responded to the journalist, "I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people, horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. I'm not a pedophile."

When O'Donnell asked if the president thought Allen was specifically referring to him, the president retaliated, saying, "You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated."

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Trump went on to say that O'Donnell's "friends on the other side of the plate" were instead the ones who had been involved with Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender who operated a sex trafficking network involving underage girls.

The president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or close connection to Epstein, however his name is mentioned more than 1,000 times among the three million Epstein documents released by the Department of Justice, with references including unverified sexual assault claims against Trump.

Trump on '60 Minutes'.

Despite O'Donnell reminding the president that she was reading Allen's words, the president continued to criticize her, saying "You shouldn’t be reading that on *60 Minutes*. You’re a disgrace."

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Following the broadcast of the interview, CBS News released a statement to the Washington Post defending O'Donnell.

"This suspect is being charged with one count of trying to assassinate the president of the United States. It is a basic tenet of journalism to ask questions and seek the truth. It was our responsibility to ask the president about the latest evidence and what we had just learned after obtaining the manifesto a few hours before the interview.”

Trump has previously been critical toward female journalists, including exhorting a Bloomberg reporter "quiet, piggy" when she she asked questions about the contents of the Epstein files and his reluctance to see them released.

In 2024, he called ABC's Rachel Scott "nasty" and "hostile" during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. When Scott addressed the president's offensive rhetoric with Black politicians and journalists and asked how Black voters could support him, Trump responded by saying, "I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner."

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