Trump Evades 60 Minutes’ Taiwan Question Just Months After Suing the Show for $16 Million.NH
President Donald Trump would not directly answer whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China attacked it during an interview with CBS News program 60 Minutes.
His sit-down with anchor Norah O’Donnell, pre-recorded Friday at Mar-a-Lago, marked the first time he has appeared on the program since he launched and later settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit over one of the show’s reports featuring Kamala Harris.
O’Donnell quizzed the president about Taiwan following his meeting with China’s Xi Jinping in South Korea last week.
“You have said that Xi Jinping wouldn’t dare move militarily on Taiwan while you’re in office. But what if he does?” O’Donnell asked. “Would you order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan?”
“You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that,” Trump replied, referring to Xi, and added that the issue of Taiwan “never even came up” during their meeting.
“He never brought it up because he understands it, and he understands it very well,” Trump said.
When O’Donnell pressed the president further, Trump continued to dig his heels in.
“I can’t give away my secrets,” he replied. “I don’t want to be one of these guys that tells you exactly what’s going to happen if something happens. The other side knows, but I’m not somebody that tells you everything, because you’re asking me a question.”
While Taiwan has long claimed its independence, Beijing considers it part of China and says it wants “reunification” – which would be against the wishes of most Taiwanese people. There have been fears that Xi could try to seize the island nation, which has a population of about 23 million and which is a global leader in the crucial semiconductor chip industry.
The U.S. has helped fund Taiwan’s defense – without recognizing it as an independent country – for decades. However, the Washington Post reported in September that Trump declined to approve $400 million in military aid to Taiwan this summer.
The full interview is due to air Sunday evening. Trump also discussed Venezuela, Israel, the government shutdown, immigration, and his attempts to deploy the National Guard to cities around the country, according to CBS News.
Trump sued CBS in November 2024, alleging 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an interview with Harris.
The network initially fought the suit, calling it “meritless,” but in July CBS and its parent company Paramount settled with Trump for $16 million.
Trump’s dispute with the network had far-reaching political, economic, and journalistic ramifications.
In April, a top producer at 60 Minutes announced he was quitting, alleging the storied news show had lost its “journalistic independence.”
Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’s Late Show, criticized the eventual settlement as a “big fat bribe,” as part of his regular criticisms of Trump. That same month, the network announced the Late Show will shutter next year.
Executives described the decision to cancel Colbert as a purely financial one, though critics argued the network was bending the knee to appease the Trump administration, which held sway over a then-pending merger between Paramount and Skydance, a media company led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and Trump backer Larry Ellison.
The merger was approved in August, and CBS News is now led by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion writer and founder of the publication The Free Press, a new media outlet that frequently criticizes so-called “woke” topics.
Josh Marcus contributed reporting
