An ex-Trump cabinet member has blasted a MAGA push to open public land to private development in a new 60 Minutes segment.
Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who led the Interior Department under President Donald Trump’s first term, joined a successful bipartisan effort this summer to kill a provision in the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would have required the government to sell off more than 1 million acres of public land.
The provision, drafted by MAGA Sen. Mike Lee, had been framed as a way to tackle the housing crunch while reducing the national debt. It also aligned with the Trump administration’s wider push to make more public land available for development.
Zinke, 64, slammed the idea of using land sales to pay down the national debt, which has ballooned to a record $38 trillion, in an interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday.
“You could sell the entirety of the federal estate, it’s not gonna get you out of debt,” Zinke said. “If you have a hotel, and the hotel is being mismanaged, you don’t sell the hotel. You get new management. And then if you sell the public land, you sell it all, right? Have you changed why you’re in debt? No, you’ve just sold your assets.”
The congressman argued that selling the land wouldn’t solve the housing crisis either, adding, “It’s a red, white, and blue issue. It’s not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an American issue. And once you sell land, you’re not gonna get it back.”
Lee told 60 Minutes in a statement that “the federal government controls more land than it can manage, hurting the growth and prosperity of American families and their communities.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Lee for comment.
Last week, CBS News revealed that its flagship show is struggling to fill its guest seats with people willing to openly criticize Trump during a segment on the president’s controversial pardon of a crypto billionaire.
It comes as CBS undergoes a makeover sparked by the controversial appointment of conservative commentator Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief by Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.
Weiss has axed a series of shows and fired dozens of staff since she arrived at the network in October. She has reportedly sounded out Fox News anchor Bret Baier as a possible successor to Dickerson on CBS Evening News and courted CNN’s MAGA contributor, Scott Jennings.
Ellison, the son of Trump ally and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, took over the network in August after his company, Skydance, merged with Paramount, CBS’s parent company.
The network’s change of hands was approved by regulators after it paid Trump $16 million to end the president’s legally dubious lawsuit over the editing of 60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris.
