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During his November return to 60 Minutes, the iconic news show he had accused of election interference just a year prior, Donald Trump heaped praise on the “great new leader” who had just been put in charge of CBS News.

“I don't know her, but I hear she's a great person,” the president gushed about Bari Weiss, the “anti-woke” founder of the neoconservative site The Free Press and recently installed editor-in-chief of the network.

Moments after the president lauded Weiss, whom he made a point of saying he didn’t personally know, correspondent Norah O’Donnell wrapped up the interview and thanked Trump for his time. It was at this point, according to four people familiar with the situation, things got extremely chummy on the set between Weiss and the president.

Following the initial end to the sitdown, O’Donnell and Trump engaged in a bit of small talk, which saw the president once again express how excited he was about the new leadership at CBS News and “how great” Weiss would be for the network. Besides praising Weiss during the interview, Trump had also applauded Paramount chief David Ellison, who had recently purchased CBS News’ parent company and is the son of his close pal Larry Ellison.

Unbeknownst to Trump, sources told The Independent, Weiss was actually on location for the interview and quickly approached the president to introduce herself. “He was so happy to see her and she was so excited to meet him, they both leaned in and exchanged kisses on the cheek,” one source said.

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Sources told The Independent that Bari Weiss and Donald Trump exchanged kisses on the cheek following the president’s 60 Minutes interview. (Getty)

Another source pointed out that several people in the room were shocked by the exchange, and that O’Donnell’s “jaw dropped” over the friendly embrace between the network’s top editor and the commander-in-chief.

“I’m still kind of stunned by this,” a CBS News reporter said. “It reeks of elitism.”

The Independent has reached out to representatives for CBS News, Weiss and the White House for comment.

Following the pleasantries between Weiss and Trump, the president agreed to the executive producer’s request to sit back down and allow for O’Donnell to ask him a couple more questions, which centered on his pardon of crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao and the appearance of corruption due to Zhao’s business ties with the Trump family.

“I'd rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, ‘Can I ask another question?’ And I said, yeah,” Trump replied at one point, according to the transcript CBS News posted online. “Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn't have to answer this question.”

While network staffers aware of the cheek kisses between Trump and Weiss criticized “the lack of professionalism” displayed in the moment, one high-ranking CBS News insider insisted that it is “standard fare” for network executives to exchange “pleasantries” in this manner following presidential interviews.

Besides asserting that this was fairly common behavior, the insider added that Weiss wasn’t the only one embraced by Trump on set. “It wasn't just Bari that he greeted that way. It was everyone,” the insider stated.

Other CBS News staffers, however, disagreed with that assessment.

“That absolutely is not a normal news practice. A firm handshake is an acceptable greeting,” the reporter declared. “It’s wildly inappropriate and presents an overly chummy relationship with the president that no real journalist should or would engage in because it suggests a lack of objectivity. That is the president, not a grieving family member.”

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Weiss has been under fire over the editorial direction of CBS News, which critics have said is ‘MAGA-friendly’ and deferential to the Trump administration. (Paramount)

A former CBS News producer told The Independent that “standard operating procedure is just being professional and everyone taking a photo together,” while one source familiar with the exchange snarked that they’ve “never kissed a head of state on the cheek before.”

In the months since that 60 Minutes interview, Weiss has faced increasingly intense scrutiny over her editorial decision-making at CBS News and faced accusations of favoritism towards Trump and his administration.

Last month, she set off a potential “revolt” within 60 Minutes when she decided to spike a story about Venezuelan migrants being deported by the Trump administration to the violent El Salvadorian prison CECOT at the last minute. She repeatedly defended the decision, claiming the piece was “not ready” because it needed a voice from the administration, prompting the reporter on the segment to suggest the move was politically motivated.

The reboot of CBS Evening News, now led by Weiss’ handpicked anchor Tony Dokoupil, has only brought more criticism over the “MAGA-coded” editorial stance of the network.

Whether it’s the friendly interviews with Trump officials, a largely unchallenging one-on-one with the president, Dokoupil’s lighthearted “salute” to “ultimate Florida man” Marco Rubio, or the Fox News style sign off the anchor recently adopted, critics have savaged the show as “state TV” while viewers have been tuning out.

Even more questions have arisen over Weiss potentially placing her thumb on the scale to boost the administration after CBS News published an anonymously sourced report that the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Good “suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident.”

That story – which cited two unnamed “U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition” – quickly gained a lot of traction within the MAGA media sphere, especially as it aligned with the White House’s narrative about the shooting.

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During the November ‘60 Minutes’ interview, Trump heaped praise on Weiss as the new leader of the network. Moments later, she introduced herself to the president and they shared a friendly embrace. (YouTube)

The Guardian later reported that the story didn’t just receive skepticism from media observers, it was also criticized at the network and met with “huge internal concern” by some.

Meanwhile, Weiss “expressed a high level of interest in the story” during Wednesday morning’s editorial call.

“There was big internal dissension about the ‘internal bleeding’ report here last night,” a CBS source told The Guardian. “It was viewed as a thinly-veiled, anonymous leak by [the Trump administration] to someone who’d carry it online.”

It hasn’t been lost on media analysts that Weiss pushing for the “internal bleeding” story to get quickly published despite concerns about sourcing comes as she simultaneously insists that the “Inside CECOT” story is “not ready” to air.

“This vague, anonymous sourcing apparently is fine for stories that suit political purposes of the Trump Administration,” Too Much TV writer Rick Ellis observed. “But given that Weiss has been arguing that a months-long reported segment on torture at CECOT can’t be aired unless there is an on-camera response from the Trump administration, it feels as if there are two sets of rules for what is considered good journalism at CBS News.”

Ellis added that CBS News insiders told him that while the reporters of the “internal bleeding” story wanted to wait for additional details, “higher-ups at the news division pushed to publish the story.” In the end, he noted, those insiders felt this was another indication that “Weiss and her newly-installed cronies are attempting to use the news division as a propaganda tool under the guise of improving the quality of journalism.”