President Donald Trump took time to kick a man while he is down by calling former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley “stiff” and “afraid.”
Trump was critical of Pelley for pushing back on company leadership.
“I think Scott Pelley’s got his own problems, he’s terrible,” Trump told The New York Post’s Miranda Devine on “Pod Force One.”
“Look, Scott Pelley’s a stiff and he’s afraid, and he’s part of this, you know, gang of crooked, stupid people that don’t care about our country,” the president added, per Mediaite.
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CBS fired Pelley after he gave rebuked leadership at the network in a Monday staff meeting.
Pelley called the “60 Minutes” head Nick Bilton unqualified to lead it and alleged CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was trying to “murder” the show.
Bilton, a journalist, was recently hired as the executive producer of “60 Minutes. Bilton told employees about Pelley’s firing late Tuesday, saying he “made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with [Pelley] over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground.”
“That was not the path Scott chose,” Bilton wrote in a memo. “What I regret most is that this situation interfered with the conversation I had hoped to have with you about Season 59 and the future of this show. I realize this is a great deal of change in a very short time, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.”
CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, is trying to implement expansive changes throughout the network.
Pelley said Bilton had “slender” qualifications to lead the show and that Weiss “does not love this place.”
“She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that,” he said.
