NYT’s Most Obnoxious Columnist Joins 60 Minutes in Pro-Trump Overhaul

CBS’s 60 Minutes is getting another Trump-styled makeover.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat is leaving The New York Times to join the storied broadcast magazine in a new role, 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton announced Tuesday.

Douthat has served as one of the Times’ principal conservative voices for more than two decades, writing for the daily’s opinion section since 2009. His latest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, was published in 2025.

Despite being an early skeptic of Donald Trump’s politics and popularity, Douthat has since downplayed the president’s authoritarian and fascist tendencies while attempting to rationalize Trump’s behavior.

He has also criticized Democrats for their “resistance” showcases, spurring condemnation from those on the left that Douthat has been incorporated into a sort of “anti-anti-Trump” persona among the American intelligentsia, apparently ready to castigate Trump’s critics even as he himself scrutinizes the president and his policies.

Douthat will join the show alongside author Sebastian Junger, CBS News correspondent Trevor Phillips, and filmmaker Gianna Toboni, according to Bilton.

Bari Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist herself, has changed seemingly everything at CBS News since she was tapped to run the fabled network late last year. Weiss was appointed despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcast, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had also never run a major news operation.

Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on now former correspondent Cecilia Vega’s 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, ranging from Vega to 60 Minutes’ veteran executive producer Bill Owens and the program’s de facto face Scott Pelley.

In March, Weiss attempted to install another questionable commentator in the show’s lineup—wellness influencer and Epstein pen pal Peter Attia—though his job offer was quickly revoked. ...