CBS News will pull a “60 Minutes” segment featuring Dr. Peter Attia on Sunday due to the contributor’s links to Jeffrey Epstein, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The segment, an October interview with correspondent Norah O’Donnell discussing his work in longevity medicine, was expected to be included in an rerun episode set to air against Super Bowl LX.
CBS News declined to comment.
The network has remained silent about Attia’s status since he has come under fire over his correspondence with the late convicted sex offender. Attia’s name appeared more than 1,700 times in Friday’s release of the government’s files on Epstein, with some emails including crass exchanges between the pair.
Behind the scenes, there has been a battle between Paramount’s corporate leadership, which sees the episode as a human resources issue and believes Attia can no longer provide expert advice, and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who wants to retain Attia and not give in to public outcry over the hire, as the TheWrap reported. Weiss has long been a critic of “cancel culture.”
Attia was one of a dozen new contributors Weiss touted to staffers during a CBS News all-hands meeting last week. The contributors were part of an effort to “widen the aperture of the stories we tell and the voices we hear from and the people we listen to,” she said.
CBS News also promoted Attia in a social media post as one of the “sharpest minds on the topics that matter most.”
But Attia’s reputation has taken a hit in recent days upon revelations of his chummy emails with Epstein.
In 2015, he lamented that the “worst part about being (Epstein’s) friend is that the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul…” In 2016, Attia joked that “P—y is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten, though.” You can see the messages for yourself below.
Attia, a physician and founder of Outlive, is an expert on wellness and longevity. His YouTube channel on health and wellness has over one million subscribers, and he’s carved out a niche on longevity. He also boasts 1.7 million Instagram followers.
Attia apologized in an X post on Monday for the relationship and said he was not involved in any criminal activity, had not discussed Epstein’s sexual exploitation of minors with him and had never traveled aboard Epstein’s plane or to his private island.
“That said, I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public, and that is on me,” he wrote. “I accept that reality and the humiliation that comes with it.”
For Weiss, the Attia controversy is the latest challenge in a tumultuous four-month tenure, in which she came under scrutiny for abruptly holding a “60 Minutes” report on Trump’s immigration crackdown and overseeing the rocky rollout of the “CBS Evening News” with anchor Tony Dokoupil.
