“I’d rather not have you ask the question,” Trump said in a deleted portion of the interview.
Last month, President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a move that raised plenty of eyebrows given Binance’s promotion of the Trump family’s crypto ventures. Trump was asked about Zhao’s pardon on Sunday during an appearance on CBS News’s 60 Minutes, where the president gave a bewildering answer. But viewers didn’t even get to see the strangest part, which was edited out.
There are essentially three versions of the 60 Minutes interview that the public can access. There’s the 28-minute version that aired on TV (and is available on YouTube), there’s the 1-hour and 13-minute video version that was posted to YouTube by 60 Minutes, and there’s the transcript of the interview published online by CBS News.
Naturally, we expect the two video versions to be different. That’s just editing and a normal part of presenting the news. But the portions that get cut can sometimes matter in the broader scheme of things. And a portion of the interview—where Trump is asked about cryptocurrency and the ways that Trump’s family has profited from it—doesn’t show up in the “extended version” released by 60 Minutes. We only know that because it’s in the transcript, as the Daily Beast was the first to point out.The background
First, a little background on the reason Trump was asked about Changpeng Zhao in the first place.
Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, created a company with Steve Witkoff called World Liberty Financial in September 2024, just a couple of months before the presidential election. The company’s crypto coin, $WLFI, didn’t really take off until Trump beat his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris in November 2024. By March 2025, World Liberty launched a stablecoin called USD1. MGX, a state-backed company from the United Arab Emirates, used that stablecoin to invest $2 billion in Binance, according to the New York Times.
Binance called it the single largest investment in a cryptocurrency company ever, and it obviously raised questions about the ethics of a sitting president’s family profiting from foreign entanglements with the UAE, as well as a private crypto firm where the founder went to prison.
Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering violations in 2023 and served four months. Zhao owed $50 million in restitution, and his pardon likely means he won’t have to pay that back, since that’s what has happened with many of Trump’s other pardons.
Which brings us to Sunday night, when 60 Minutes journalist Norah O’Donnell asked Trump about the pardon of Zhao.What TV viewers saw
TV viewers of 60 Minutes saw Trump questioned about a variety of topics like deportations, inflation, and the prosecution of his political enemies, like former FBI director James Comey. When Trump was asked about Changpeng Zhao (often referred to as CZ) and the pardon he issued, Trump insisted he didn’t even know who the guy was.
Below is a transcript of what viewers saw.
