On 60 Minutes, the President calls the host a disgrace for reading the question.

The President sat down with Norah O’Donnell of 60 Minutes for the first time in five years, on the network the President sued, owned by the company the President’s allies now run. The interview ran about thirty-three minutes. Around minute twenty, Ms. O’Donnell read out loud what was reported to be language from the alleged manifesto of the man who shot up the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The language referred to a rapist and a pedophile. She asked the President for his reaction.

The President’s reaction was that the host was “disgraceful” for asking.

Hon. The reporter is allowed to read the document. That’s the job. The reporter does not write the document. The reporter holds the document up for the camera so the rest of us can see what the suspect wrote. If the suspect’s words make the President look bad, that is a problem the suspect created.

I have worked the late shift at a diner long enough to know the difference between a question and an accusation. A question is when somebody asks you what your last name is. An accusation is when they say it like a curse word. Ms. O’Donnell asked a question. She asked it with a calm voice. She did not raise it. She did not editorialize. She just read what the man wrote.

The interview was the first since CBS settled a lawsuit with the President. The first since David Ellison’s company took over CBS. The first since they hired a new editor-in-chief specifically to make the network less hostile to him.

He still called the host a disgrace.

You ever notice how the people who say “no fair questions” the loudest are also the ones who never want to read the document out loud themselves.

That ought to concern you.