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On Thursday evening, President Trump, Melania, Stephen Miller, acting attorney general Todd Blanche, and several other members of the White House cabinet attended a private dinner at the Institute of Peace hosted by Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison—who, as you know, is awaiting regulatory approval for his $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Per the invitation, the dinner was held to honor both the president and CBS News correspondents, though there were only four correspondents in the room. Bari Weiss and Tom Cibrowski, the CBS News president, were there, as were Norah O’Donnell, Jan Crawford, and White House correspondents Weijia Jiang and Nancy Cordes. Weijia, who is currently serving as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, was toasted by Bari, Tom, and several of her colleagues over lunch on Friday at Blue Duck Tavern, but that, of course, was not the true purpose of Thursday’s dinner.
Trump and David were quite convivial during the dinner, I’m told. David gave a speech about the importance of the First Amendment, then Trump gave a lengthy speech that included friendly remarks for David and light teasing of Bari and CBS News, alongside some critiques of other news outlets. (Trump reportedly had the mic for almost an hour, portending a long night for everyone in the room at the Hilton on Saturday.) Bari and her wife, Nellie Bowles (couldn’t help myself, Nellie), sat at Trump’s table, as did Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim. Beyond that, the evening was said to be both pleasant and unremarkable. A band played theme songs from Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and Beverly Hills Cop. Guests enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, followed by salad and surf and turf.
As I’ve noted, David’s decision to host the president has rekindled the latent angst and anxiety that many press veterans feel about his takeover of CBS News, as well as his impending takeover of CNN. By now, David has more than demonstrated that he really doesn’t care about the optics—inviting Trump to a UFC cage match, attending the State of the Union address with Lindsey Graham, etcetera. He seems to understand as well as anyone that, in Trump’s America, servility is the most powerful currency—and without it he risks squandering the deal.
In retrospect, though, a private dinner was probably the most effective way to pay homage to the president away from the prying eyes of the media. As you know, CBS News will also host Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller at its tables on Saturday night—albeit not at Bari’s table. But David is almost certainly not going to be in attendance then. Odds are he is savvy enough to skip the banquet and the prying eyes of C-SPAN’s cameras, lest they capture him choking on his Chateaubriand if and when Trump decides to praise his takeover of two of America’s most storied news institutions in front of a room full of journalists who still have major misgivings about even hosting the president.
Bari’s New 60 Minutes
When Bari returns from Washington, one of the first items on her ever-expanding agenda is a long-telegraphed 60 Minutes overhaul. I’m told that Bari, Tom, and 60 Minutes executive producer Tanya Simon will announce layoffs at the program immediately after the current season ends on May 17. Though these have been portrayed as a new round of cuts, they are in fact an extension of the layoffs that hit CBS News in March, and were delayed in order to not disrupt the show midseason. I’m also told that CBS News will implement layoffs at international bureaus around that time, a delay forced by specific legalities of various local contracts.
Bari’s designs on 60 have set off a fresh wave of trauma among the CBS News insiders, especially after the New York Post reported that she intends to overhaul the entire show for next season. Her true intentions are more nuanced, I’m told. Bari recognizes that 60 Minutes is the crown jewel of the CBS News portfolio and wants to effectively franchise the asset beyond its Sunday night time slot. This will likely mean working with Tanya to create more digital programming under the 60 Minutes banner, integrating some voices from The Free Press, and leveraging that package with advertisers. This is precisely the strategy that former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim—whom Bari tried to lure to CBS early on—advocated for on a recent episode of The Grill Room.
All that said, the core 60 Minutes product will change with the departure of some talent. Anderson Cooper has already announced that he will leave the show after the end of the season. I am also reliably told that Bari is likely to cut ties with Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent behind the “Inside CECOT” piece that Bari infamously preempted late last year. As you may recall, Bari and Sharyn went to war over that piece, which culminated in a meeting in which Sharyn accused Bari’s deputy Adam Rubenstein of being “a mouthpiece” for the administration.
Bari and her team saw Sharyn as unreasonable and insubordinate. As I previously reported, she did at one point shout “You don’t get to produce me” at her new bosses, which would certainly seem to demonstrate a lack of appreciation for the org chart. On the other hand, in light of David’s Trump dinner and CBS’s WHCD guest list, you can hardly blame Sharyn for harboring those suspicions. In any event, barring a last-minute détente, the two soon won’t have to deal with each other. Whether Sharyn’s departure inspires an exodus of the rest of the 60 Minutes correspondents remains to be seen. Then again, perhaps that’s exactly what Bari wants.