TICK, TICK, BOOM: “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley was fired yesterday as the result of a contentious staff meeting with the show’s new executive producer in which Pelley told Nick Bilton that he was barely qualified for his job and news boss Bari Weiss was “murdering” the revered broadcast. 

  Neither Weiss nor Bilton has prior experience in television news and the 68-year-old Pelley had become an eminence grise after 40 years at CBS. Bilton has talked about unspecified changes at the most successful television news show of all time that’s been on the air for 58 years.

  After meeting yesterday with Weiss, News President Tom Cibrowski, Bilton, and a representative of HR, Bilton sent Pelley a memo saying he was fired “for cause.” He wrote to Pelley, “Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you.” 

  Whether “60 Minutes” has any future other than a title owned by CBS is in doubt.

  “60 Minutes” has been a target since President Trump sued over its interview with Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign and parent company Paramount settled for $16 million to secure administration approval of a merger.

  Executive Producer Bill Owens resigned last year because the corporation was meddling with editorial content. In a statement released to Variety, Pelley said; “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.” 

  Last week Weiss fired Owens’ successor, Tanya Simon, as well as correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. The staff was devastated and in Monday’s meeting Pelley confronted Bilton in front of everyone. Bilton wrote a memo to the staff yesterday saying; “I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don’t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.”     

SLUSH FUND: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed yesterday that the Justice Department and President Trump are abandoning establishment of a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund to compensate people who believe they were victims of political prosecution under the Biden administration.

   The notion of the fund that could have been used to pay January 6^th rioters was met with howls of outrage from both political parties. Blanche told a congressional hearing, “The reasons for the fund remain as important as they were before but we are not moving forward with the fund.”

  The fund was the product of settling President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for leaking his tax returns. The Justice Department is preserving the part of the settlement that gives Trump, his children, and businesses immunity from IRS audits and prosecutions for all current and prior tax filings.

  Rep. Rosa DeLauro told Blanche, “You just gave the president and his family a tax immunity to the tune of a hundred million dollars.” 

JOB TRAINING: President Trump yesterday named William Pulte, the  Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Chairman of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, to be the  acting director of national intelligence. 

  Trump extolled Pulte’s experience managing money, but did not mention that he has no experience in intelligence or anything of the kind. The President said Pulte will continue in his current positions while also overseeing 18 intelligence agencies.

  Pulte is the man who has been looking into the mortgage records of Trump “enemies,” referring  the likes of New York Attorney Gen Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff, and former Rep. Eric Swalwell for prosecution on charges of mortgage fraud.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’: Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, are leading in the California primary vote to run for governor in the fall. Billionaire Tom Steyer is third.

  In California’s “Jungle Primary” system, the top two finishers regardless of party run in the general election.

  In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass finished first but may face a runoff against former reality television star Spencer Pratt, who has run an inventive artificial intelligence ad series with himself as Batman saving the city.

MISSING MAN: New Jersey Republican Rep. Thomas Kean Jr., who has been missing from Congress for nearly three months with little explanation other than that he has a medical issue, yesterday won his party’s nomination for another term in Congress.

  “Right now I am focused on my recovery,” he said in a statement. “and under the advice of health care professionals I will transition from virtual work to in-person work within a matter of weeks.”

INFINITE SCROLL:

— The Supreme Court approved an Alabama congressional district map preferred by Republicans that leaves the state with only one majority-Black district. 

— President Trump is proposing to levy trade tariffs on as many as 59 countries he says have not cracked down on goods made with forced labor. It’s his biggest effort to impose tariffs since his original levies were struck down by the Supreme Court.

  The targeted countries include China, Brazil, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, and Mexico.

— Asked yesterday at a press conference about his medical advice for people with “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a label for those accused of having an irrational hatred for the President, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said, “Treating stupid is really hard.”  

THE SPIN RACK: The White House Correspondents Dinner that was interrupted by a would-be mass killer has been re-scheduled for July 24^th. — Kathie Lee Gifford, the television host and widow of the late football star and announcer Frank Gifford, put her Greenwich, Connecticut waterfront estate on sale for $100 million.    

BELOW THE FOLD: President Trump confirmed in a podcast interview that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he’s “fucking crazy” but insisted that the two “worked very well together.”

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