The real Nick Bilton revealed – from the political beliefs of the new ’60 Minutes’ host to the rivals he beat for the top job
It appeared Nick Bilton he was not the only candidate Barry Weiss considered for the lead role in “60 Minutes.”
Multiple sources with knowledge of CBS News’ hiring processes say the CEO of Paramount Skydance David Ellison he is not entirely involved in reviewing the candidates, but also in meeting personally with at least two candidates – including Bilton.
But Bilton had one key advantage over the other candidate with the credibility of reality TV news, Josh Tyrangielformer Bloomberg chief content officer and Vice Media news EVP who had test talks with Paramount brass in the fall, P6H has learned. (Earlier in his career, Tyrangiel was also once seen as an heir Rick Stengelposition of managing editor at the time.)
Bilton, a UK-born, Florida-raised contrarian, had spent nearly two decades studying ticks and the psychology of billionaires. And it paid off. As we reported yesterday, Bilton made $2.5 million from his new “60 Minutes” gig. Sources tell us the salary is $1 million more than the “60 Minutes” veteran. Ask Simon he was resigning from the same job before he was fired by Weiss earlier this month. (CBS News had no comment.)
Weiss’ so-called war Cabinet includes Charles Forellewho worked with Weiss at the Wall Street Journal, and Adam Rubensteina former New York Times colleague, and Sam Siegel. (It should be noted that these three have no knowledge of broadcast news).
Since taking control of Paramount, Ellison has assembled a top management team that is “ideologically aligned,” as one knowledgeable source described it. But while Bilton’s work as a journalist, writer, screenwriter and director is now well-known, little is known about how the 49-year-old’s politics and worldview fit into the larger vision Weiss — and his manager David Ellison — are creating within Ellison’s growing media empire.
It’s impossible to ignore the role politics play behind CBS News and “60 Minutes” under editor-in-chief Weiss, who is in the process of restructuring the division while parent company Paramount seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Like Weiss, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where Bilton falls politically. The biggest draw is that Bilton, who has always been critical Donald Trump in her first stint in the pages of Vanity Fair, she now finds herself inside a company that many see as friendly, if not compliant, to the Trump Administration.
Interviews with friends and former colleagues suggest that any political dynamics within Bilton were subtle. Sources paint a picture of a highly informed user who was deeply affected by the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel, and who has a voice on the cultural and political upheavals of the past decade.
One thing is certain: Despite appearing as a beat reporter breaking the news first as a technology writer at the Times and as a columnist at Vanity Fair, Bilton was always comfortable walking the corridors of power and will soon find himself sitting at the table with some of the most powerful people in the world. Like Weiss, he knows how to impress the rich and powerful. And like Weiss, he comes with a certain amount of personal baggage.
“He didn’t get the job without testing Bari’s political litmus test,” said one source familiar with the vetting process who emphasized that Weiss often asked high-level political questions.
A source close to Bilton disputes the idea that politics were part of his discussions with Weiss about the “60 Minutes” job.
“I don’t think (Nick) is a player in the secret service. He was skeptical of strong words especially as they worked for white people over a certain age, and he fell into that group of writers who grew suspicious of young writers and some of their politics.”
Another friend agreed that there is no strong political pivot but there is a slight disenchantment with things on the left. “It was the DEI stuff, the college protests and anti-Semitism, some of the Covid principles. Nothing radical, and all the things that a lot of middle-aged people had a problem with,” said a source who was sure Bilton had never voted for Trump.
A third friend scoffed at the question of whether Bilton was properly lost. “Right and left are empty words. Nick’s politics are in line with a lot of the tech people he’s putting together,” a friend explained.
Bilton’s connection to Weiss began when he worked for the Times in San Francisco covering Silicon Valley. One of his colleagues was Nellie Bowleswho is now Weiss’s wife.
In LA, Weiss and Bilton would attend separate press parties. Both were at a book event held by the author Susan Orleansand Bilton was at the after party for the Free Press debate at the Ace Hotel in 2023. He lives in West Hollywood with his wife and children. Weiss and Bowles and their two children lived near Larchmont, but ran in the same circles.
One topic of discussion where Weiss and Bilton could find common ground was how certain writers were treated by their colleagues within the New York Times.
When Weiss resigned from the Times, he published a famous letter accusing his employer of fostering a hostile workplace, where religious dogma was the norm and those outside of that belief faced cyberbullying by colleagues. And while Bilton has had no public disagreements with the Times, there is ample evidence that he feels slighted by his former colleagues.
On Nov. 17, 2024, shortly after Trump was elected to his second term, Bilton fired back at his former employer at X: “I’m not a fan of RFK, but Red Dye 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1 cause allergies, sensitivities, and immune problems. BHT disrupts hormones and is linked to cancer, blueberries like the NYT of animals.”
Among some Times staffers, that sense of disdain is consistent. Another Times source said:
Another source who works with Bilton said: “The Times crowd was mad at Nick. “I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if [he and Bari] they are bound more by their hatred of all the full shirts of the Times than by their shared politics. “
Bilton and Weiss may also underestimate the risk of taking unpopular positions on social media. By Bilton’s own admission, the “digital crowd” was a scourge, something he knew firsthand. In 2013, in one of his first columns for the Times, he wrote: “I got into an argument with a bunch of people on Twitter about Trayvon Martin, which was the headline story of the day. I know, how can I be stupid? ‘GET OUT THE BELLY!'”
That and several of his other columns led Gawker to call Bilton “the worst columnist in the New York Times.”
While the recent frenzy surrounding Bilton has largely focused on his first few days on the job, one can look to his past work to get a more rounded picture of the journalist. He wrote a piece in 2013 for Vanity Fair titled “My Dinner With Peter Thiel.” It’s hard to make sense of the episode. He admits that the three-hour confab with Silicon Valley’s elite was off the record. But he doesn’t remember a single thing that was discussed, “because I was so hungry that my mind couldn’t remember that information.” There was no understanding of Thiel’s rise when he supported both candidate Trump and the lawsuit against Gawker that would send the news site into bankruptcy. Instead, Bilton pondered the culinary offerings and lamented the “sushi that looked like it was picked up at the local Stop & Shop.”
An emerging criticism of Bilton is that at some point in his career, he seems to have given up his job as a journalist in an effort to join the elite crowd he was supposed to be talking about.
Back in 2013, before she became a Times columnist, she was written in an email from her agent, John Brockmanalongside an impressive list of the richest and most powerful people in the world including Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein. (Brockman was named Epstein’s “intellectual enabler” by the New Republic.) The email is part of the Justice Department’s Epstein files. (A source close to Bilton recoils at the idea that he once went easy on the tech titans he talks about. “That’s bull–t. Nick bombed Silicon Valley with his story. He went after everyone until he was no longer welcome in the area,” the source said.
As of 2018, Bilton was still in the Brockman fold. In his book “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road,” Bilton thanked “book agents, Katinka Matson and the rest of the amazing team at Brockman, Inc. (Matson is Brockman’s wife, and the couple appears to be close to Epstein, according to a January 2026 data dump, and invited the disgraced financier to various events.)
But one defender of Bilton says that writers who write for the oligarch class need a tight fit that allows them to enter the world without being exposed as a communicator. “Nick can do that without being a sycophant,” the source said.
Of course, Bilton’s name made headlines this week when he fired a veteran “60 Minutes” reporter. Scott Pelley.
But on Tuesday, at CBS News headquarters, Bilton was in the control room as dozens of screens broadcast reports from other stations. One employee noted that at one point Bilton’s face was seen superimposed on many of them.
