Bill Maher backed the shakeup at 60 Minutes on Friday and made clear he was not mourning Scott Pelley’s exit. Asked on Real Time what he thought of the changes at the longtime CBS news program, Maher replied, “I’m for it.”
The comment landed days after Pelley was terminated on Tuesday following a clash earlier in the week with new executive producer Nick Bilton. Maher sharpened his view by saying, “I just don’t think being a ’60 Minutes’ correspondent is that hard. I don’t feel like Scott Pelley was a national treasure.”
The dismissal has become a fresh flashpoint inside one of television news’s best-known programs, where staff upheaval and accusations of political pressure have collided with a very public argument over what the show is becoming. Pelley’s departure came after he accused editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” the program, and his exit note said Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison was casting “this legend aside” to curry favor with the Trump administration.
Maher did not buy that explanation. When the charge was put to him that CBS and 60 Minutes were moving toward MAGA alignment, he said, “That’s a big charge that you just made, that that that ’60 minutes’ itself and CBS itself is now completely MAGA. I don’t see it that way.” He also said he had seen coverage that was “not very favorable to the president,” undercutting the idea that the program had been transformed into a friendly outlet.
The dispute sits inside a wider argument about whether newsroom decisions are being bent by politics. Murphy said Trump was using the powers available to him as president to install only friendly ownership at big media companies and to keep critics off the air, while also saying it could be hard to know what audiences were missing in a censorship environment. He added that claims about bias at 60 Minutes would be difficult to judge from the outside, because it is not always clear what stories never make it to air.
That is why Maher’s reaction mattered beyond one segment. He rejected the idea that Pelley was being treated like a protected institution and dismissed the notion that the program had already become fully aligned with Trump. What remains unanswered is the practical one: what specific reasons CBS gave for Pelley’s termination, and whether the changes now sweeping through 60 Minutes are the start of a larger reset or just the latest fight over who gets to define the show.
