Patrick Clancy’s 60 Minutes Interview Should Have Been the Most Gripping Television of the Year. It’s Clear Where the Show Went Wrong.

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Bari Weiss’ 60 Minutes was never going to change hearts and minds. Since the former New York Times columnist and Free Press founder took over as CBS editor in chief in 2025, the show has changed drastically and perhaps for the worse. Veteran reporters like Scott Pelley and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired as executives meddled more and more in the show. Unqualified replacements, like former Times columnist Nick Bilton, who has never produced a news television show before, took over as 60 Minutes ’ executive producer. At this rate, if the show replaced its iconic ticking stopwatch with an A.I.-generated image of an iPhone clock, it wouldn’t even be that surprising.

But last night, for its second episode under Weiss, the show had a marquee guest destined to bring viewers back in, or at least to bring in the postbroadcast YouTube-clip crowd. Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, who was recently on trial for killing her three children in what she says was a haze of postpartum psychosis , sat down for his first interview since the case ended in a mistrial . Interviewed by former anti-abortion columnist and Brain cosplayer Ross Douthat, Patrick Clancy sat down with his second wife, Dr. Rachel Danis (now also pregnant), to talk about his grief since losing his three children.

Indeed, when it comes to what responsibility Patrick Clancy might bear for the deaths, neither hearts nor minds have been changed.

The more pro-Clancy corners of the internet—like r/DuxburyDeathsFreeTalk, with its almost half a million visitors per week—remain staunchly on his side. “After a major tragedy some people just go to pot, physically age etc… turn to drugs, booze, ya know all that!” wrote one user just after the episode aired. “He’s done the opposite! He takes care of himself which is what we all should learn to do more of.” Meanwhile on TikTok, the people who previously believed that Clancy did it are no less shaken in their convictions. “Patrick wasn’t really asked anything by the host of actual substance,” said the Crime Junkie podcast on TikTok . “Literally every question that you guys would have for Patrick Clancy was not asked and was not answered. Watching this was tough for me … Interviews like this are important but they’re important when you ask the right questions.”

Meanwhile, people online are dissecting the sincerity of his wife’s smile , replaying her words in slow motion to try to catch a flinch or a tick when she says “I can’t bring his kids back,” as if it’ll crack the case wide open. Inconsistencies between the teaser and the segment, namely details about how the two of them met that didn’t end up in the final interview segment itself, have been picked apart.