President Donald Trump lost his temper at 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell during an interview after she read excerpts from the manifesto of Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old suspected gunman who opened fire near the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Allen had sent the manifesto to his family moments before the shooting. Trump, 79, grew visibly angry as O’Donnell read the quotes aloud.
“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” Trump said, his voice rising. “Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.” O’Donnell then asked Trump whether he believed Allen was referring to him when he wrote that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
According to The Daily Beast, Trump responded immediately. “I’m not a pedophile. Excuse me. Excuse me. I’m not a pedophile. You read that c— from some sick person? I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things.”
Trump’s Epstein ties and legal history continue to follow him into this controversy
The interview took place just hours after Allen opened fire near the WHCA dinner, injuring several people. Trump himself had been at the event earlier that evening, and reports detail how Trump was rushed out of the dinner after shots rang out. Allen was taken into custody after a brief standoff with police.
Allen’s alleged manifesto also noted that FBI Director Kash Patel was not among his targets, writing, “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” The manifesto also included Allen’s comments on security at the event.
“What the hell is the Secret Service doing?” he allegedly wrote, adding that he had “expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.”
Allen, a California educator, was allegedly armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives when he tried to enter the ballroom of the Washington Hilton. “What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me) is nothing,” he allegedly wrote. “No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event.”
The Daily Beast‘s Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty, whose hotel room was next door to Allen’s, called the situation a “security fiasco.” “How on earth could someone with a disassembled long gun check into a room at a hotel where the president was going to speak? I can answer that: Nobody even looked at my luggage on Friday afternoon,” Dougherty said.
Trump has faced ongoing scrutiny over his ties to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In a 2023 civil trial, a New York jury found that Trump sexually abused journalist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Carroll was awarded $83 million in damages for defamation, on top of a separate $5 million awarded after another jury found Trump liable for sexual assault claims.
Trump failed to overturn the $83 million verdict. One woman interviewed by the FBI in 2019 also accused Trump of sexually abusing her when she was 13. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime. A newly discovered document from the Epstein files contradicts one of Trump’s central claims about his relationship with Epstein.
The document, first reported by the Miami Herald, comes from a 2019 FBI interview with a Palm Beach police chief, who recalled a conversation with Trump around 2006. In that conversation, Trump said he was glad police were “stopping him” because “everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
Trump also said he once saw Epstein with teenagers and “got the hell out of there,” according to the document. This comes as Trump’s foreign policy moves remain equally aggressive, with the president recently ordering the military to engage Iranian vessels laying mines in a major escalation.
In a September House hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel testified that Trump’s name appeared in the Epstein files fewer than 100 times. However, CNN has reported that Trump actually appears in the files more than 1,000 times. The Justice Department announced in late December the discovery of over one million documents potentially related to the Epstein case, though there are more than three million documents overall.
Published: Apr 27, 2026 09:30 am