When 60 Minutes Overtime went looking through the broadcast’s archives for footage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, more than 30 years of stories turned up. Trump and Clinton have appeared on the 60 Minutes broadcast eight times -- each -- throughout their lives. In the video player above, viewers can watch footage of the candidates that hasn’t aired in decades.

“If you had the chance to look at all of their appearances on 60 Minutes, you’d have a really good sense of who you wanted to vote for,” says Jeff Fager, executive producer of the broadcast. “We have such a body of work from these two people that represents different moments in their lives-- sometimes difficult moments, sometimes really telling moments -- and the interviews say everything about who they are.”

“There are certain consistencies in [Trump’s] character that don’t change at all, in each interview, as you go back and look at them.” Jeff Fager



It begins with a 1985 profile of Donald Trump, then a 39-year-old real estate developer, or as the 60 Minutes called him, “a swashbuckling billionaire.” It was Trump’s first real taste of national TV, and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace — father of Chris Wallace, who moderated the final presidential debate — teased Trump for showing up to the interview in a suit and tie on a Sunday afternoon.

Mike Wallace also interviewed some of Trump’s tenants who accused him of driving up rents to evict them.

“When they call you arrogant and cruel, those tenants over there, does that get under your skin?” Wallace asks Trump in the piece.

“No, because you see, I think I’m right,” Trump responds, “and when I think I’m right, nothing bothers me.” It was 1985, but his tone will sound familiar to anyone following the 2016 presidential campaign.

1985: Donald Trump in his first appearance on 60 Minutes, next to his then-wife Ivana Trump CBS News

“There are certain consistencies in his character that don’t change at all, in each interview as you go back and look at them,” Fager says. “He’s the same person.”

Trump had already begun to develop a distrust of the media in that first interview, complaining to Wallace that the press unfairly portrayed him as “overbearing.”

“Maybe it’s an image that people like to write about because it sells magazines,” Trump suggested.

60 Minutes producer Bob Anderson produced Scott Pelley’s 2015 interview with Trump and heard the same complaint from Trump three decades after Wallace heard it. “He genuinely feels that too often, the press either makes him look bad or tells lies about him,” Anderson says. “And by trying to undercut the press and its believability and veracity, that inoculates him against any bad press because, of course, they wouldn’t treat him fairly.”

“It’s about us trying to do our job properly, which is to help the viewer, the voter, better understand who this person is and what they stand for.” Jeff Fager



Trump returned to 60 Minutes throughout the 1980s and 90s, as the broadcast covered his adventures as an Atlantic City casino owner. In one story, Trump’s bravado got a laugh out of Morley Safer when he egged on a competitor who threatened his Atlantic City turf. In another story, Trump got into a public feud with entertainment mogul Merv Griffin.

2000: Donald Trump when he was considering a presidential run on the Reform Party ticket CBS News

“He wants to be perceived a winner,” an indignant Griffin said of Trump. “I say, who cares?”

In 2000, 60 Minutes cameras followed Trump as he explored a run on the Reform Party ticket. The story upset him when it aired, says Fager, because it took note of all the empty chairs in the audience at a Trump press event.

2015: Donald Trump runs for president CBS News

Hillary Clinton also hasn’t been pleased with some of her appearances on 60 Minutes over the years.

When Clinton first appeared on the broadcast in 1992, she was a 44-year-old governor’s wife, trying to rescue her husband’s presidential campaign from long-rumored allegations of marital infidelity.

Correspondent Steve Kroft conducted the joint interview a few hours before it aired on Super Bowl Sunday. “That interview was really the first time the American public had seen her. She had not been on [national] television to the best of my knowledge,” says Kroft. “People knew that Bill Clinton was married to a very smart lawyer, who was going to be a big asset to his campaign, but nobody had really seen her in action.”

Thirty-four million people watched the couple’s debut on the broadcast. It was a tense 10 minutes of television. What they didn’t see, however, was a freak accident that occurred 40 minutes into the interview when hot lights crashed down onto the couch, just a few inches from where the Clintons were sitting. The outtakes show the couple leap off the couch and into each other’s arms.

Producer Frank Devine was in the room. “It was clear that there was some kind of serious relationship between the two of them,” Devine says. “That despite what had gone on, they were a team.”

1992: Hillary and Bill Clinton in their first 60 Minutes appearance CBS News

Producers got another surprise. It was Hillary, not Bill, who delivered the most famous line of the day.

“You know, I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said with a twang.

“She made a distinct impression,” says Kroft, “to the point that some people came up afterwards -- most of the women-- and said, “You know, she should be running for president and not Bill.”

1993: Hillary Clinton as first lady CBS News

A year later, Hillary Clinton was on the broadcast again -- this time as First Lady of the United States. The evolution of Clinton’s 60 Minutes appearances over the years read like a resume: Senator, Democratic primary contender, Secretary of State, and most recently, Democratic presidential nominee.

Kroft sees a subtle shift in her on-air personality since that first interview in 1992. “She’s probably lost some of her early spontaneity,” he says. “Obviously, she’s much more guarded now -- by necessity.”

Both candidates have been annoyed by certain questions they were asked in 60 Minutes interviews over the years, and they made their displeasure known.

“This isn’t about whether the interview is easy or hard,” Fager says. “It’s about us trying to do our job properly, which is to help the viewer, the voter, better understand who this person is and what they stand for.”