60 Minutes - 10/19/2025: The Dealmakers, Erez Reuveni, Amy Sherald

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

After a historic Middle East peace deal was signed last week, correspondent Lesley Stahl sits down for an exclusive interview with President Trump’s envoys and the leading brokers of the agreement: Jared Kushner, former White House advisor and son-in-law of the president, and Steve Witkoff, Middle East envoy under Trump. Kushner and Witkoff discuss their unconventional deal-driven approach, including meeting Hamas in person, and the next phase of the 20-point peace plan, which aims to tackle thorny issues like disarmament, aid, troop pullback, rebuilding, and postwar governance. Correspondent Scott Pelley reports on the tense relationship between the Department of Justice and the courts. Pelley speaks with Erez Reuveni, a 15-year Justice Department attorney - in his first television interview – about a pattern of troubling behavior he says he witnessed before he was fired. Correspondent Anderson Cooper profiles painter Amy Sherald, best known for her portrait of Michelle Obama. He traces her rise from obscurity to becoming one of America’s most celebrated living artists. Sherald explains why she canceled her own career retrospective at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and reflects on the resilience behind her vibrant, optimistic work. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight, President Trump's hand-picked deal-makers take us inside the negotiations between Israel and Hamas that led to a breakthrough in one of the world's most intractable conflicts. I heard the president asked you what the chances were for success. Yes. And you said? 100%. And he said, why do you feel so confident? why do you feel so confident?

Yeah. And I said, well, we can't afford to fail. I felt like a bomb had gone off. Eris Ravani won awards as a government attorney in the first Trump administration. Now he's been fired. He says, for standing up to lawlessness in the Department of Justice.

There was a pattern and practice at the direction of DOJ leadership to ignore court orders and, worst of all, to lie. Amy Sherald's paintings have sold for as much as $4 million and are often compared to work by the great masters of American realism. Does that make sense to you in any way? It's technically what I want it as a black woman, artist, American,

for people to be like, yeah, Amy Sherald, Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper, like, I'm in the room with the guys. And so I think I'm okay with it. Yeah, I think I'm okay. Not a bad room to be in. No. Yeah. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Scott Pelly. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alphonsey. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories, and in our last minute, the mentalist on people's minds, tonight on 60 Minutes. The new Bemo, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more.

More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more. It's less than a week since the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages, and the deal between Israel and Hamas is already being tested, with Israel carrying out airstrikes after accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire. That a ceasefire had been reached at all was a big surprise.

It followed months of failed attempts to end the two-year war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas's October 7th attack. The breakthrough came after President Trump deputized not two diplomats to move the negotiations along, but two businessmen, one, a close friend, Steve Whitkoff, the other his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, dealmakers who came up through the world of New York real estate. I heard the president asked you what the chances were for success. Yes. And you said?

100%. feel so confident. Yeah. And I said, well, we can't afford to fail. We just kept on thinking to ourselves, this finish line, this finish line is about saving lives. Yes. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner got to that finish line, they say, using the intensely personal

techniques of real estate deal makers, dangling presidential promises, protections, or punishments to get Israel and Hamas to agree. We wanted the hostages to come out. We wanted a real ceasefire that both sides. would respect. We needed a way to bring humanitarian aid into the people, and then we had to write all these complex words to deal with the 50 years of stupid word games that everyone in that region is so used to playing. Both sides wanted the objective, and we just need to find a way to help everyone get there. Early September, Kushner, Whitkoff, and negotiators from the Middle East were making headway on a ceasefire hostage deal when suddenly things went up in smoke.

fired missiles into Qatar to assassinate Hamas' leadership. Six people were killed, including the son of Khalil Al-Haya, Hamas's top negotiator. We woke up the next morning to find out that there had been this attack. Wow. And of course, I was called by the president. You had no idea, obviously. None whatsoever. You know, I think both Jared and I felt, I just feel we felt a little bit betrayed.

Now, I had heard that the president, that he was furious. I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing, and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests. People should understand that Netanyahu, the Israelis, bombed the peacemakers, Bomb the negotiating team. And by the way, Leslie, it had a metastasizing effect because the Qatari's were critical to the negotiation, as were the Egyptians and the Turks, and we had lost the confidence of the Qatari's.

And so Hamas went underground, and it was very, very difficult to get to them. And they were your link to Hamas. Absolutely. You were dealing through the Qatari's to make your proposals to Hamas. And it became very, very evident as to how important and how critical that role was. But there was something that happened that brought the Qataris back in. And that was this phone call that I think President Trump actually forced Netanyahu to make to the Qataris.

I wouldn't call it forced. You wouldn't? Look that way. Look that way. It's becoming a diplomat. Yeah. Clearly. Whether the president himself knew of the attack in advance or not,

he wanted Netanyahu to apologize to the Qataris. The apology needed to happen. It just did. We were not moving forward without that apology. And the president said to him, people apologize. And so, on September 29th, the president held the phone while Netanyahu read a scripted apology from the Oval Office. Mr. Trump was now directly engaged.

he gave Qatar a new security guarantee. So today is a historic day for peace. And introduced his own peace plan, calling for an immediate ceasefire and release of all remaining Israeli hostages all at once. The notion was to convince everybody that those 20 Israeli hostages who were alive were no longer assets for Hamas.

They were a liability. How did they become a liability and not their sort of... Because they weren't... Bargaining chip. What did Hamas gain by keeping these hostages? You had tens of thousands of Palestinians who were killed in these wars. You have half of Gaza, or more than half of it, is absolutely destroyed.

And so what's been the gain? But Hamas was still reluctant. Hamas' worst nightmare in the deal would be that Israel withdrew to the agreed-upon line. Hamas released all the hostages. And then once that occurred, Israel just resumed the war and went back to going after them. To reassure Hamas, President Trump gave Kushner and Whitkoff permission to talk directly with the terrorists, a big break with diplomatic protocol. On October 8th, the two landed in Egypt to deliver a message from President Trump to Al-Haya, Hamas's top negotiator. The president said, we will stand behind this deal.

We will not allow the terms of this deal for any party to be violated. And both sides will be treated fairly. And both sides will be treated fairly. So we got into the room, the lead negotiator, was sitting right next to me. That negotiator was in Doha when the Israelis struck. Correct. He survived, but his son was killed. Is that right?

That's right. And we expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son. He mentioned it. And I told him that I had lost a son and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children. Whitkoff's son, Andrew, died of an opioid overdose at the age of 22. When Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.

Is it true that once the deal was agreed to, that the Israelis there at that meeting and the Qataris began to hug each other? Absolutely. And I thought to myself, I wish the world could have seen it. The deal allowed members of Hamas to stay in Gaza and called on Israel to release nearly 2,000 Palestinians, including some convicted terrorists. Once the ceasefire went into effect,

Hamas was given 72 hours to free the Israeli hostages. Kushner and Whitkoff waited nervously, so... You decide to go to Gaza. And what did you see? It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area, and then you see these people moving back, and I asked the idea, where are they going? Like, I'm looking around. These are all ruins, and they said, well, they're going back to the areas where they're destroyed home was onto their plot, and they're going to pitch a tent. And it's very sad because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go. Would you say now, having been there, that it was genocide? No. No. Absolutely not. No. No, there was a war being fought. So that very night, you go to Hostage Square, where the families of the hostages have been protesting, mourning, being very frustrated, angry sometimes.

And every time you mention President Trump. To President Donald J. Trump. I had to stop because they were cheering. Thank you Trump! Thank you, Trump! But then you tried to thank Netanyahu. Yeah. And...

To Prime Minister Benjamin... Netanyahu. Oh. Every time you said his name, they booed. Look, that's how they feel. I don't feel like that way. And I thought he steered his country through some really difficult circumstances. People think that he prolonged the incarceration of the hostages for his own political

future. Yeah, I don't think that's the case. October 7th for me was a shattering day. Since then, my heart has not been complete. But then Kushner brought up the Ghazans. To see the suffering end for the people in Gaza, who, for most of them, were experiencing this through no fault of their own. The biggest message that we've tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now

is that now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better. What are you doing with that message? We're just getting started. How sure are you that what you've accomplished so far is going to stick? First of all, it's the Middle East, so everyone complains about everything. One worrisome issue, whether Hamas is dragging its feet in returning the remains of deceased Israeli hostages.

Are you saying publicly right now that Hamas is acting in good faith, seriously looking for the bodies? As far as we've seen from what's being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far. That could break down at any minute, but right now we have seen them looking to honor their agreement. Another flashpoint, the number of trucks Israel is allowing to enter Gaza with desperately needed food, medicine, and other aid. Then there are several issues that were kicked down the road left unresolved. Like the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal, the need to establishes. an international peacekeeping mechanism

of functional government in Gaza, and most urgently, when and how Hamas will disarm. Hamas now is using weapons to execute people that they perceive as their enemies in Gaza. And they're also using their weapons to reestablish themselves

as the entity that is governing Gaza. They're moving into the vacuum. Hamas right now is doing exactly what you would expect a terrorist organization to do, which is to try to reconstitute and take back their positions. Right. The success or failure of this will be if Israel and this international mechanism is able to create a viable alternative.

If they are successful, Hamas will fail, and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future. The eventual rebuilding of Gaza will be a monumental project, that the two businessmen running the negotiations have deep financial ties in the Middle East. specifically in Qatar has raised ethical concerns. So you have both done a lot of business with the Gulf states, billions and billions of dollars worth of business. And you've done some of the business, wow, this negotiation has gone on.

And that has raised some issues of conflict. I mean, some blurring of a line between, you know, what you're doing in terms of foreign policy, and benefiting financially from what's going on. So, first of all, Leslie, nobody's pointed out any instances where Steve or I have pursued any policies or done anything that have not been in the interests of America. But the perception?

But, Lizzie, we can't spend our time focused on perception as much as we have to focus on the facts. We're here to do good. These are impossible tasks. And because this is important, I've volunteered my time to help the president and Steve try to make progress. But Steve nor I will be involved in awarding contracts or figuring out who does business, you know, in Gaza after. Well, from my standpoint, Leslie, I'm not in business anymore.

Yeah, but your family is. But I've divested. Like Jared, I receive no salary, and I pay all my own expenses. This has become an issue. What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world. If Steve and I didn't have these deep relationships, the deal that we were able to help get done that freed these hostages would not have occurred. This past Monday, the Israeli hostages, all 20, were home in Israel. Families marveling with joy, disbelief, emotions so deep it hurt.

Steve, how are you feeling? feeling when they come up. Allated. Allated. And I was thinking to myself, what would I have felt like when I got the call from Cedar Sinai Hospital that my son had died if the call from them was he didn't die. We revived him. And these people were all getting that type of call. Their kids were coming home. But less than a week after their return, the ceasefire is under strain. And the dealmakers are back in the region trying to keep things from unraveling. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring

your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. Eris Rouveni was on his way up. He was an attorney in the Department of Justice, who was so effective defending President Trump's first-term immigration policy that he was promoted right away in Trump's second term. but Ruvani's 15-year Justice Department career ended suddenly after he says he witnessed government lawyers lying in court and evading orders of a judge. These last few months have been a time of upheaval in the Justice Department. Now Ravani's claims are raising concern and courtrooms across the country. The administration has called Ruvani a leaker, seeking five minutes of fame. But

In his first television interview, Eris Rouveni told us he's paid a price. Speaking up cost him his dream. Even before I went to law school, I understood what I wanted to do as a lawyer was to be involved in public service. And everyone understood at the time you do it at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. There's no better place as a young attorney to just do the sorts of cases where you're standing up in court as a first chair. attorney on behalf of the United States doing things that law firm partners don't do.

And that meant what to you? That meant I was there on behalf of the American people, on behalf of the millions of citizens of this country to make sure that justice was done. Eris Rovaney started in 2010 as a so-called career attorney. Most lawyers at the Justice Department stay for years, even decades, defending the policies of one president after another. Rovaney specialized in immigration law, and in the first Trump term, he defended the controversial ban on travelers from Muslim countries, among many other cases. I was promoted. I received three awards for defense of fairly high-profile litigation. I defended everything they put on my plate. That was my job.

And at the beginning of the second Trump administration, you were promoted again. That's right. Very soon into the administration, I was selected to be the acting deputy director of the immigration section, overseeing about 100 attorneys in every case that arose in the federal district courts. But it was the very day of that promotion, Friday, March 14th, that he and others were called to a fateful meeting with Amel Bovi, President Trump's newly appointed number three at the Justice Department, who was once Trump's criminal defense attorney. And we were told at this meeting that over the weekend, the president of the United States would be signing a proclamation, invoking something called the Alien Enemies Act. This is a wartime law from 1798 invoked three times in the nation's history during the war of 1812, World War I and World War II. The Alien Enemies Act allows rapid expulsion from the U.S. of the citizens of enemy nations during a war. But without a declared war, Trump used it against more than 100 Venezuelans that the government said were terrorists. They were to be denied their right to be heard by a judge.

Ruvani says Bovi expected a challenge. Bovi emphasized those planes need to take off no matter what. And then after a pause, he also told all in attendance, and if some court should, should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court, fuck you. And when you heard that, you thought what? It felt like a bomb had gone off.

Here is the number three official using expletives to tell career attorneys that we may just have to consider disregarding federal court orders. The next day, Saturday, lawyers for the prisoners sued. Judge James Bosberg called a hearing and asked government lawyer Drew Ensign whether the planes were leaving that weekend.

And Ensign says to Bozberg, I don't know. Now, Ensign was at the same meeting that I was at the day before where we were told in no uncertain terms that planes were taking off over the weekend that those planes needed to take off no matter what. And he says, I don't know. Ravaney says that moment in court was stunning.

It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer's code of ethics to mislead a court with intent. We don't know, Inson's intent. It was during the hearing that the planes took off. The judge issued an order and immediately Ruvani emailed the agencies involved. The judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone and to return anyone in the air, But that didn't happen. Instead, more than five hours after Bozberg's order, the detainees, and other prisoners arrived at a maximum security prison in El Salvador. And then it really hit me.

It's like, we really did tell the courts, screw you. We really did just tell the courts, we don't care about your order. You can't tell us what to do. That was just a real gut punch. Department of Justice has the responsibility to obey all court orders. It can disagree with the order. It can appeal it. It can ask the judge to reconsider.

But while the order is in effect, it's the obligation of the department to see to it that the government complies. Peter Keisler should know he ran the Justice Department as acting attorney general in 2007 for George W. Bush. He worked in Ronald Reagan's White House, and today he's part of a law firm representing federal workers fired by the administration. But some people watching this interview are thinking, if these people have been labeled by the administration as terrorists as gang members, then we should get them out of the country as quickly as possible. And they're a lawful means to get people who are terrorists out of the country. Lawful means that Keisler says must include giving the detainees a chance in court.

to contest the charges. Look, we have a saying in this country, it's deeply embedded in who we are. Everybody deserves their day in court. And all of us want to know that if the government acts against us, we will at least have the opportunity to go to a neutral decision-maker,

present evidence and legal argument, and make sure that the government stays within its legal bounds. But does the day in court apply to immigrants? Absolutely. Nobody can be spirited out of the country without some opportunity to contest the factual and legal basis for that.

And it turned out when the full facts were known, this Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrago-Garcia, had been deported by mistake. Normally, people deported in error are returned, but instead, Ruvani says that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue against Abrago-Garcia's return by telling a judge that Abrago-Garcia was an MS-13, gang member and a terrorist.

And I respond up to chain of command. No way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief. You're not saying Abrago Garcia is a choir boy.

You're just saying that no one had managed to prove that he was a terrorist. Here's the really important thing here. Whether Mr. Obris Garcia is or isn't a member of MS-13 or a terrorist or anything else is beside the point. What matters here is that they did everything they did to him in violation of his due process rights. What's to stop them if they decide they don't like you anymore to say you're a criminal. You're a member of MS-13. You're a terrorist. What's to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay? delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie. And now that's you gone, and your liberty

changed. After refusing to sign the brief that called Abrago Garcia a terrorist, Ruvani was fired. In June, he teamed up with lawyers from the Government Accountability Project to file a whistleblower disclosure, making his story public helped expose a growing concern in many courts across the country. That too often now, the Justice Department is abusing the limits of the law. So the judges are saying some incredible things. Ryan Goodman is a law professor at New York University who heads a nonpartisan law journal.

His team has analyzed hundreds of suits filed against the administration, and he didn't imagine what judges were saying to the Trump Justice Department. We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said what the government is providing me is false information, it might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again. In court records compiled by Goodman, Democratic and Republican appointed judges are critical of the Trump Justice Department's work. Highly misleading, said one judge. A serious violation of the court's order wrote another. and a third warned, trust that had been earned over generations has been lost in weeks. This isn't the way things normally proceed? It's not. In fact, I would say for some of the cases that we're looking at,

maybe that would happen once every 10 years. Who gets hurt by this? The one entity or person or institution gets hurt the most is the Justice Department. We requested interviews with the head of the department, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Her former deputy, Amel Bovi, and Drew Inson, the attorney who said he didn't know when the planes were taking off, according to the court transcript. All declined the interview request. Bovi was nominated for a judgeship, and in June, he was asked about Ruveni's claims.

I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order. Bovi said in part that Ravani was in no position to tell his superiors what. to do. There's a suggestion that a line attorney, not even the head of the Office of Immigration litigation, was in a position or considered himself to be to bind the department's leadership and other cabinet officials. Bovi was also asked if he had dismissed the courts with an expletive. Well, did you suggest telling the court to you in any manner?

I don't recall. was confirmed for the judgeship, and in a statement to 60 Minutes, he wrote in part, Mr. Ruveni's claims are a mix of falsehoods and wild distortions of reality. Kilmar Abrago-Garcia was returned to the U.S. He's now charged with transporting illegal immigrants, and he's pled not guilty. A judge criticized the Justice Department's poor attempts to connect him to MS-13, and he was not charged with terrorism. About those prisoners sent to El Salvador, they were released to their home country, Venezuela. And in April, the Supreme Court agreed unanimously that they had been entitled to their day in court.

This interview is the first time that your face has been seen in such a public way. And I wonder if that concerned you. It does. At the same time, I think about what we're losing in this moment. I think about why I went to the Department of Justice to do justice. And I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law.

I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now. When Amy Sherald was selected to paint the official portrait of Michelle Obama eight years ago, many people in the art world didn't know who she was. They do now. At 52, Sherald has become one of America's most successful. celebrated painters. She's had two major museum retrospectives this year and was supposed to have a third this month of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. But Cheryl canceled it. Concerned, she says, that museum officials, already under pressure from the Trump administration,

were going to try and censor a painting. The controversy made headlines, but Cheryl has faced much bigger challenges than that. Like many of the people she paints, Amy Sherald has found a way to make her way. In Amy Sherald's paintings, her subjects, black Americans, stare silently straight out from the canvas. There's something in their eyes that draws you in, something knowing in their gaze.

They appear unapologetic, unafraid, posed against monochromatic backgrounds, or in scenes as bright and bold as they are. In this painting, a farmer leans atop an impossibly pristine John Deere tractor surrounded by blue sky and green grass. In so many of your paintings, the subject is looking out at the viewer.

I think that's important. I don't think these portraits are confrontational, but they are present, and they do want you to sit with them and have an exchange. They have jobs. They're doing their jobs, you know? They're being beautiful, they're being colorful,

but they also have work to do in the world. And they're doing that work in your painting? By standing there and being present, and looking at you and meeting your gaze, that's the work. They don't have to say anything, but every time you look at that portrait, something is happening inside of you. Amy Sherald's work hangs in the most prestigious museums in America

and in the rooms of major collectors and some smaller ones, including me. This summer, she gave us a private tour of her show American Sublime while it was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, home to some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Cheryl has been dreaming of having a show here for years. I would sit in my studio every day,

and I would meditate and visualize myself in this space. How does it compare to the fantasy? It's exactly like it. Is it? Yeah, it's perfect. Her paintings are portraits, but not in the traditional sense. The people in them are real, but their names are rarely used. She's cast them in a visual story all her own.

The process starts with a photograph after I randomly come across some person that I'd like to say, like my energy recognizes their energy or there's something there, right? Just kind of hold it like you're... They come to the studio and either I already have a vision in my head of what I want to create or they are the walking vision of what I want to make and I photograph them. She's used friends, models, dancers, strangers she's seen on the street. The clothes they wear are often thrift store finds. Cheryl has racks of them in her studio.

I've had this for probably five years. Just waiting for the right person. There were only two paintings in Cheryl's show of people whose names were used. This is her portrait of a very alive, Brianna Taylor, painted after she was shot to death by police in 2020 in a botched raid on her apartment. And this is Cheryl's most famous work, The former first lady titled Michelle LaVan Robinson Obama. Unveiled in 2018, it made headlines around the world.

Did you know how important this was going to be for your career? Yes. Did you think about that? I think in the moment, I wasn't thinking about that because if I did, I probably would have just freaked out. You know, I just stayed out of my head and stayed in the painting. What stands out to you? When I look at it now, the dress, like, I'm deeply in love with this dress, just the red, the pink, the yellow, and then the black and gray.

I wanted the dress to also have some kind of symbolism and almost be a painting in and of itself. Before coming to the Whitney American Sublime was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Sarah Roberts was the show's curator. I wasn't sure we could do Amy Cheryl for San Francisco. 60 minutes because I'm not sure that cameras really capture the work. It's a very different experience to see it in person. There's a luminescent quality to it. There's a quality to the color that is impossible to catch on camera.

They have a majesty and a tactility when you see them in person that they lose in reproduction. How does she do that? She's an incredible painter. I mean, just the technical skill. Cheryl's style of painting is called American realism. It's a way of depicting the ordinary and American life. It has meant slightly different things to the different painters it's been applied to. And she is creating images that say something about America right now.

Ideas of freedom, ideas of individualism, freedom of expression, and a lot of kind of Americana ideas. You know, there's the cowboy and the beauty queen and the white picket fence. She's reimagining them and redeploying them to make sure that that idea of America includes everyone. Everybody has a seat at the table. A place on a museum wall. It was this painting on a museum wall

that Amy Sherald says changed her life. She saw it on a class trip to the city art museum in Columbus, Georgia when she was a teenager. It was painted by an American artist named Bo Bartlett. There was a figure in it that was an image of a black man. And I realized in that moment that I had never seen a black person in a painting before. In any painting, you had not seen a black person. What did you think?

I thought I want to do this, too. You knew in that moment you thought that I want to do this. 100%. It turned on the light. Her parents, Amos and Geraldine Sherald, hope she'd be a doctor. But in college, she broke the news to them she was going to devote her life to art. She spent more than a decade painting by day and waiting tables at night. night. Did you ever think this is not going to work out? Yeah, but I couldn't give up. Like I always say,

the world is full of quitters. And most people don't want the discomfort and most people don't want the risk. So if I kept at it, then eventually something would have to happen. What happened was not what she expected. Cheryl, an avid runner, was training for a triathlon in 2004 when she was diagnosed with a rare heart condition. My doctor said, you're lucky to be alive. He's basically say, like, don't do anything to get your heart rate up because you could have a tachycardic episode and you could die. She nearly did eight years later. She collapsed in a drugstore and spent months in the hospital before receiving a heart

transplant. She was 39 years old. The donor was a young woman named Kristen Lynn Smith. Does it feel different to have somebody else's heart? It doesn't anymore, but it does. I'd say for, like, the first five years. Wow. For five years.

Yeah. You think about it a lot. I have moments where I think of her, and usually when I'm doing something that I wouldn't have been able to do. So, like, whenever that happens, I have on my Instagram account, I hashtag it Adventures of Crescent and Amy

so that I can mark all the big moments and include her in those moments. And when I sign my name, I put a little heart on the end for her. So she lives in all your paintings? She does, yeah. Amy Sherrill's studio is in this warehouse in New Jersey. She makes about a half dozen new paintings here a year.

In a closet, there's a wall full of paints in colors she's mixed herself. This is the gray scale that I paint from when I'm doing the skin. Skin color in her portraits is something Cheryl has given a lot of thought to. If you hadn't noticed, she doesn't use brown or black. She paints her subject's skin in shades of gray. Right now, we're in the mid-tone phase, where I'm still shaping the face. At first, she says she just liked the way the gray looked. It reminded her of old family photographs she grew up with.

This one is of her maternal grandmother. You want somebody to see the humanity in your subject? I think that's where it starts. That's why I chose to use the gray scale instead of brown. I think that it offers the viewer an opportunity to pause and consider something else before we get to that. If they had brown skin in your painting, would that be the first thing that people noticed? I think so. I mean, I think we still look at each other through our phenotypes anyway. Phenotypes is what?

Phenotypes are your eyes, your nose, your lips. Like, you know, you can look at somebody and say like, oh, because this person is probably Caucasian and this person is probably not Caucasian, you know, but they look black. I can't take blackness away from them. But the lack of color allows for a different entry point. When did you realize that? When I became afraid to paint brown people because I was afraid that the work would be marginalized

and not be able to be in conversation with other artists, just it be put in the black corner. That certainly seems unlikely now. At auctions, her paintings have sold for as much as $4 million and are often compared to work by the masters of American realism, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, even Norman Rockwell. Does that make sense to you in any way? It's technically what I want it as a black woman, artist, American, for people to be like, yeah, Amy Cheryl, Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper, like, I'm in the room with the guys. And so I think I'm okay with it. Yeah, I think I'm okay.

to be in. No. Yeah. Before we left her studio, Cheryl showed us this model made in preparation for the now canceled exhibition of American Sublime at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. You get to see how it flows and then what kind of story is telling as the viewer walks through. She told us she backed out of the show in July after learning Smithsonian officials were concerned about this painting of a trans person posing as the Statue of Liberty and wanted to

to display it alongside a video they said would, in their words, contextualize the piece. The Trump administration had for months been criticizing the Smithsonian as being too woke and promised to review its exhibitions. When Cheryl canceled, the White House applauded, calling the painting, quote, divisive and ideological. There were conversations about the work being censored. The show is American Sublime. It was a whole narrative, and a trans woman is a part of that narrative for me. Any kind of contextualization around the work would have been unacceptable, and it would have deviated from how the work was originally conceived.

And because of that, I felt like my only choice was to pull out. Do you see your work as political? Today, I do. I don't think that it's in its true nature from where it comes from inside of me, political. But it lives in the world. and therefore can be art on Monday and political on Tuesday, you know? It's like the pinnacle for me. Cheryl's paintings won't be hidden away for long.

After she canceled the show in Washington, the Baltimore Museum of Art offered to exhibit American Sublime. The show opens there November 2nd. Do you consider the work patriotic? Yes. I don't think there's anybody more patriotic than a black person. How so? I mean, we've been here since the inception of this idea of what American is.

We are deeply ingrained in the fabric of this country. This country would not be if it was not for us. So I have to claim that patriotism. Otherwise, I'm just handing it over to somebody to give me the definition of what it means to be American. But I know what the definition of what it means to be American is, and I'm the definition of an American. The last minute of 60 minutes. Now, a look ahead to next week and Cecilia Vegas story about O's Perlman.

He's a master at making people think he can read their minds. Pearlman told us the key to his act is reading body language to reveal what someone is thinking, such as an ATM pin code. Five, eight, three, one. People that are very intelligent are much easier because their mind is regimented in a certain way. I've performed for Nobel laureates. You go, this is one of the most intelligent people on the planet.

I go, hook line and synchron, let's go. This is going to be a cakewalk. The mentalists can pull one over on anybody, including us. Okay, now you're freaking me out. I'm Bill Whitaker. That story and more next week on another edition of 60 Minutes.