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CBS Fires '60 Minutes' Scott Pelley 'For Cause' After "Performative Display Of Hostility"

CBS News has fired "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley over a row with new executive producer Nick Bilton.

As Just The News reports, the shakeup marks the latest in a series of major changes at the network since Bari Weiss took over the network.

Her tenure has prompted internal dissent, much of which has leaked into the press.

Weiss founded the Free Press after leaving the New York Times and became head of CBS News after a buyout.

Pelley was among those critical of Weiss's decisions, including the appointment of Nick Bilton as executive producer for the show, Politico reported.

Pelley said CBS News head Bari Weiss was “murdering the show” and accused its new producer of having “slender qualifications” for the job, according to a report from HeadlineUSA.

Pelley made his accusations in an introductory meeting Monday between the newsmagazine’s staff and Nick Bilton, the new executive producer named by Weiss last week, according to a detailed report on the Status website, which said it had heard a recording of the meeting.

Weiss herself was not present, according to the report. Status specializes in media news and analysis.

Status reported that Pelley, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent, began grilling Bilton at the 10 a.m. meeting about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

Status also reported that Pelley told Bilton, a former technology journalist and filmmaker with no traditional broadcast news experience, that his qualifications for the position were “slender.”

Pelley also charged, according to Status, that Weiss herself had “no qualifications for her job,” and said the changes she had made to “CBS Evening News,” which Pelley once anchored, “have been catastrophic.”

It added that Bilton insisted that “Bari loves this institution” and “she loves ’60 Minutes'” — to which Pelley countered, “She’s murdering ‘60 minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and she’s doing exactly that.”

The New York Times, which also reported that it had listened to a recording of Monday’s meeting, noted that Pelley’s “newscaster’s baritone” was shaking during the exchange.

The newspaper also quoted an unnamed executive at the meeting as saying Weiss had been prepared to come, but “we asked her not to.”

Reports about the contentious meeting came four days after Weiss, who has become a polarizing figure in the media world since taking the reins at CBS last October, told staff in a memo that it was time for a “new approach” at the top-rated newsmagazine.

In the memo, Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski said their goal was “building a show that thrives in the 21st century.”

“That requires a new approach,” they wrote, defining that approach as “expanding ‘60 Minutes’ beyond a one-hour television broadcast, deepening its role across CBS News, and holding everything we produce to the ambition, fairness, and fearlessness that have defined ‘60 Minutes’ at its best.”

In a termination letter that Politico obtained, Bilton fired Pelley after this outburst, accusing Pelley of "hijacking" his meeting with staff to question his qualifications and said he treated him with "remarkable incvility and contempt."

Full letter from Bilton below (emphasis ours)

Dear Mr. Pelley:

I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead.

Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.

I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.

Yesterday’s performative display of hostility—enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation—demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.

Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.

Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear.

And I have heard you.

I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.

Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes

Mr. Pelley, in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening shortly after he was fired, told The New York Times that he had devoted decades of his life to “60 Minutes,” which he said he still cared about deeply.

“I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pelley said. “I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.”

Pelley issued a statement after his firing (emphasis ours)...

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

"60" has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to "keep up the good fight." Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable.

The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

We give the final word on this farce to a handful of social media commentators who summed up our feelings rather well:

The arrogance of this pathetic pasty carcass is comical.

— D.C.M (@dc_roark) June 3, 2026

Good riddance. We don’t want to hear these left wing paid liars anymore.

— The North Remembers (@TheNorth212) June 3, 2026

Reading from scripts prepared by Media Matters and the Clintons ruined 60 Minutes.

— Gordon 💥🇺🇸💥✡️ (@StopTheCoup2020) June 3, 2026

Scott Pelley is one more corrupt degenerate Democrat who has contributed to bringing our country to this point of moral and social rot. And he thinks he is the good guy.

Good riddance.

— Augustina 🇻🇦 (@AugustinaJJD) June 3, 2026

What a petty, pontificating jackass.

— Jack Bauer after dark 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@JackBauerAD) June 3, 2026

Ouch!

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/03/2026 - 12:10

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Rabo On Regime-Change At The Fed: What Warsh Can (And Should) Do First

The honeymoon period for Warsh is over.

The FOMC could have given him the professional courtesy of allowing him to settle in, but in recent weeks several Committee participants have staked out their position.

They want to drop the FOMC’s easing bias and instead take a more neutral stance.

This means it will be more difficult for Warsh to convince the Committee of cutting rates anytime soon.

Against that internal pressure, WSJ's Fed whisperer, Nick Timaraos reports that Warsh has tapped two outside associates to advise him while he settles into the job, one of whom previously helped write a conservative blueprint that recommended a radical restructuring of the central bank.

The manifesto drew attention for floating ideas well outside the mainstream of monetary policy, including a menu of overhauls whose top-ranked option was “free banking” - effectively abolishing the Fed in favor of privately issued, commodity-backed currency.

The report included a disclaimer that said the ideas shouldn’t be attributed to any individual and instead synthesized the views of a panel of contributors.

Winfree later distanced himself from the chapter’s more provocative proposals.

“I do think the Fed should be reformed,” he told Roll Call in 2024. “But I would not subscribe to the idea of nuking the Fed.”

As Rabobank details below, the shifting dynamics in the FOMC cannot be seen separately from the developments in the Strait of Hormuz.

As the conflict drags on, energy prices will remain elevated and high inflation sustained for longer.

We flagged repeatedly that given the developments in the Middle East, we were more likely to drop a rate cut from our forecast for 2026 than add one.

Because of the shifting FOMC dynamics and their changed house view of the conflict and its resolution, Rabobank is now adjusting our Fed view.

Shifting FOMC dynamics

As we noted last week, in just a few months, the situation into which Warsh is parachuted has changed dramatically.

At the start of the year, we still expected that the new Chair could convince the FOMC of making three rate cuts before the year had ended.

After the outbreak of the war with Iran, we dropped one rate cut from our forecast.

However, the Strait of Hormuz is still disrupted today and gasoline prices and inflation have continued to rise.

Therefore, we repeatedly flagged that because of the developments in the Middle East, we were more likely to drop a rate cut from our forecast for 2026 than add one. Meanwhile, nonfarm payroll growth has been solid and the unemployment rate has remained at 4.3%.

As a result, the center of the FOMC has moved away from rate cuts.

What’s more, in recent weeks several Committee participants staked out their position.

Governor Waller’s conversion was the most notable. Last summer, he positioned himself as a Trump-loyalist, leading the charge to cut rates, because of increased downside risks to the labor market. After losing out to Warsh in the race for Fed Chair, he is shapeshifting again. Coincidentally, Waller jumped ship on the same day that Warsh was sworn in, making Warsh’s mission even more difficult than it already was.

Moreover, by staying on as Governor, Powell is effectively blocking the addition of another Trump-loyal Governor.

To the new Fed Chair it may feel as if he has been dropped behind enemy lines.

More inflation and less room to cut

Not completely unrelated, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz has dragged on.

RaboResearch has changed its view of the conflict and its resolution and now thinks that the Strait will be closed until September.

This has led to an upward adjustment of our energy price forecasts, which also means that we will adjust our forecasts for US inflation. More details will be provided in our Monthly Outlook next week. With our outlook for inflation higher and more persistent and the FOMC taking defensive positions against the new Chair, we now change our Fed view as well.

Instead of a rate cut in September 2026 and another in December 2026, we now forecast the first cut in October 2026 and the second in January 2027.

So we shift our expected rate cuts one meeting into the future. This means that we now forecast only one rate cut in 2026, instead of two.

At the same time, we add a rate cut to 2027 (previously none). The reason why we still expect the Fed to cut before the end of the year is that the conclusion by many Fed speakers that the labor market has stabilized may be a bit premature. After all, we have only just seen the first back-to-back positive nonfarm payroll growth figures in almost a year. What’s more, the fallout from the war with Iran could have negative repercussions on the real economy, even in the US. It is still a long way to the end of the year and we could easily see a return of downside risk to the labor market before we are there. In this case, the FOMC may reintroduce its easing bias.

For example, in his May 22 speech, Governor Waller said: “With regard to future rate cuts, I am going to need to see improvement on inflation or a significant deterioration in the labor market before I would consider reducing the policy rate.”

Note that he uses “or” instead of “and”, which implies that even without improvement on inflation, the labor market could be a reason to cut.

The Fed may be talking tough now, but they have a history of getting wobbly knees when the economy starts to falter. The reason why we do not shift the previous September cut beyond October, is the midterm election.

If downside risks to the labor market rise in Q3, Warsh will have a strong incentive to push for a rate cut prior to Election Day.

Therefore, the October meeting is his last chance to help boost the chances of the Republican candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives by cutting rates and giving the stock market a lift.

Conclusion

Instead of delivering the rate cut that President Trump would have preferred, Warsh will likely have to remove the easing bias from the Fed statement at his first FOMC meeting as chair.

A sensible approach for Warsh would be to refrain from pushing for rate cuts in June and July, but instead introduce the analytical framework that will allow the FOMC to resume its prewar path of rate cutting later in the year.

If the current surge in inflation is purely a supply shock, the Fed should be able to look through the high headline inflation figures and focus on core inflation and inflation expectations.

If core inflation picks up substantially and inflation expectations become unanchored, then inflation pressures could become persistent.

However, if we see only a modest rise in core inflation and long-run inflation expectations remain stable, the Fed could resume its pre-war interest rate path, which was sloping downward.

Our forecast is now that the Fed will cut in October 2026 and January 2027, instead of September 2026 and December 2026.

So we move the rate cuts one meeting into the future.

This will still get the federal funds rate to what the median FOMC participant sees as the neutral level, only a little later.

The direction of Warsh’s mission is clear, but he may get there later than the administration might like.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/03/2026 - 11:55

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Goldman Sits Down With Anduril As 'War Unicorns' Reshape Defense Tech

Palmer Luckey’s defense startup, Anduril, is emerging as the Department of War’s answer to the urgent need for affordable, scalable advanced weaponry produced at lightning speed, rather than through the slow, over-budget procurement cycles that have long defined the legacy primes.

The twin conflicts raging across Eurasia and the Middle East, from the Russia-Ukraine war to the U.S.-Iran war, have forever altered modern warfare, with drones, seaborne drones, ground robots, and AI kill chains now reshaping the battlefield.

The quick rise of Anduril, something we call a “war unicorn,” has attracted the attention of Goldman analysts, who recently felt compelled to sit down with Anduril executives to better understand the story and how it will play a major role in the next phase of rebuilding America’s defense-industrial base.

Analyst Noah Poponak recently hosted Anduril co-founder and CEO Brian Schimpf and head of investor relations Allison Lazarus in New York to gain more color on how the defense company is solving the defense industry’s biggest bottleneck, speed.

Oculus headset creator Palmer Luckey, who founded the company in 2017, has focused on building lower-cost, scalable systems in categories such as drones, counter-UAS, and missiles, positioning itself against a legacy defense-industrial base that includes Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and many others.

Here are Poponak's top takeaways after speaking with Anduril executives:

What is Anduril solving for? The U.S. defense industrial base is currently geared towards producing low numbers of expensive, bespoke assets. While these assets are very capable - they have extremely high specifications and performance requirements - they have historically been used in limited quantities, often utilize sole-source specialty materials and components, and have complex manufacturing processes, all of which makes scaled production ramp-ups difficult. More recently, the rate at which these assets have been used in modern conflicts relative to their respective manufacturing footprints and stockpile levels has proven to be high. This has prompted the United States to 1) increase the production rate of these assets, but 2) develop and procure lower-cost alternatives that can be mass-manufactured. This is where Anduril steps in. The company designs its products with affordability and scalability in mind ("affordable mass").

In the long-run, Anduril believes its capability set can be a differentiator, but right now it is prioritizing scalability and speed by focusing on these principles:

1. Vertical integration. When it makes sense to do so, Anduril brings component and module production in-house, decreasing its reliance on external vendors to meet production targets. When the company does rely on external vendors (e.g. Anduril owns the design for a component, but does not produce it in-house), it seeks strategic relationships with commoditized component manufacturers, aiming to avoid the supply chain risks sometimes posed by sole-source suppliers (although this is hard to avoid with modules). Importantly, Anduril is not looking to completely vertically integrate. When the industry has many suppliers of a common item (such as small turbo jets or bolts), Anduril will source that item externally.

2. Component and process commonality across product lines. By utilizing the same components (bearings, bushings, washers, electronic components, materials) across product lines, Anduril simplifies its supply chain and can flex a common inventory pool across products. Having similar production processes allows for an easier manufacturing switch between products.

3. Product simplification and production automation. By designing simpler products, Anduril creates more opportunities for automation, lowers cost, and enables higher production output. A simpler product often times comes with a lower capability set, but there are increasing use cases for these products, as best-in-class assets are not always needed to achieve mission outcomes.

4. Flexible manufacturing facilities. By designing production lines and facilities to rapidly switch between different products, Anduril is able to more quickly meet demand when and where it occurs. This also lowers the risk of idle, dedicated manufacturing space for products not currently in a procurement cycle.

Internal investments create product adoption and margin upside. In our meeting, Anduril stated a near 25% total company operating margin over time is possible. The company derives a high percentage of its revenue from fixed-price work (we estimate that to be between 70-80%), and invests substantially in internal R&D, which, per the company, could allow it to command much higher margins than traditional defense primes over time. Investing ahead of customer demand does entail risk, but the company believes it is advantageous to compete with actual in-production assets versus hypothetical assets or designs when industry RFPs are released, combined with an ability to deliver to schedule. The DoW is increasingly requesting that industry participants invest their own capital into R&D and production, as it fosters faster product iteration and more competition.

DoW acquisition reform - showing early signs of progress. While acquisition processes at the DoW are still complex and can be difficult to navigate, Anduril stated it is seeing improvement at the customer, noting an increased willingness to try new testing, prototyping, and procurement strategies across the services. At an industry-wide level, the DoW is implementing acquisition reform (see our notes here and here), negotiating multi-year framework agreements, prioritizing fixed-price contract terms, investing in companies via equity stakes, and establishing more open test and procurement strategies like the Drone Dominance Program.

What products in the portfolio are seeing momentum?

• Anduril's Fury (YFQ-44A) continues to progress through the USAF's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program as it performs aerial testing and enters the production phase at Arsenal-1.
• The company's Dive-XL product is being manufactured for the Royal Australian Navy's Ghost Shark XL-AUV program.
• Anduril recently entered into a framework agreement to produce thousands of Barracuda low-cost cruise missiles in the coming years.
• Anduril's CUAS products continue to gain momentum domestically (USMC) and internationally (to protect critical infrastructure abroad).
• Lattice is critically integrated into Anduril's hardware, but is also used for enterprise-wide / system-wide applications in the military (U.S. Army, U.S. Space Surveillance Network).

Anduril portfolio

Anduril notable awards and programs of record

Anduril fundraising rounds and implied valuation

Anduril M&A timeline

Professional subscribers can read the full Anduril note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/03/2026 - 11:35

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