Last October, just days before the election, Donald Trump sued CBS News for $10 billion over a report that aired on 60 Minutes. The report in question was an interview with Kamala Harris and Trump argued that the network had essentially tried to bail Harris out of a word-salad answer with careful editing.
In the complaint filed in US District Court in the Northern District of Texas, Trump’s legal counsel claimed CBS’ “60 Minutes” interview with Harris and the associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election in her favor…
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” the filing stated.
Trump’s legal counsel argued that “CBS’s misconduct was unconscionable because it amounts to a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.”
There really did appear to be two different answers aired at two different times though. The top clip, which appears to be her actual answer was aired Sunday morning and the bottom one aired on 60 Minutes later that night.
BREAKING NEWS: CBS is contemplating a settlement in the $10 billion lawsuit from President Trump for election interference after it was revealed that CBS changed the answers to one of the questions asked of Kamala Harris in her one on one interview with a CBS correspondent. pic.twitter.com/hECCw0P9Dj
— They are all corrupt (@GOP_is_Gutless) January 18, 2025
But CNN denied having attempted to help Harris and various lawyers, one of whom was working for CBS, said the lawsuit was meritless.
“This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media. The Supreme Court has made it crystal clear: the First Amendment leaves it to journalists – and not the courts, the government or candidates for office – to decide how to report the news,” said First Amendment attorney Charles Tobin of the law firm Ballard Spahr. Tobin is representing CNN in several ongoing matters…
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton professor of First Amendment law at Harvard Law School, put it more simply: “It’s ridiculous junk and should be mocked.”
Last night, the NY Times reported that Paramount, which owns CBS News, was in talks with Trump about settling the claim. The framing here, and it may even be true, is that Paramount is in the midst of a merger and wants this behind them so it doesn’t create a problem for the Trump administration’s approval of the merger.
Settlement discussions between representatives of Paramount and Mr. Trump are now underway, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. There is no assurance, though, that they will result in a deal, and it is unclear what the terms of any such deal might include.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, strongly supports the effort to settle, according to two people with knowledge of her thinking. Ms. Redstone stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount, the media empire founded by her father Sumner Redstone, in a deal with Skydance, an entertainment company backed by the billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.
Of course the fact that the settlement talks may be a business decision doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not also smart. CBS has thus far been refusing to hand over a transcript of the interview to Trump’s lawyers but now Paramount thinks the FCC will demand that transcript.
People inside Paramount have been expecting the F.C.C., which is now led by a Trump appointee, Brendan Carr, to request that CBS News hand over an unedited transcript of its interview with Ms. Harris, according to people with knowledge of the plans. CBS had refused previous requests from Mr. Trump’s lawyers to release the transcript.
Mr. Carr has said that the commission would probably look into the “60 Minutes” interview as part of its review of the Paramount merger.
So the story the NY Times clearly wants to be true here is that the case is meritless but that Trump now has leverage to get money out of Paramount anyway. RIchard Painter is already calling it a bribe.
“[S]ettling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay [Paramount’s] multibillion-dollar merger with another company.”
That’s called a bribe.https://t.co/VxfpYVndDZ— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) January 31, 2025
And Bernie Sanders has previous called on CBS not to settle.
CBS may be reaching a legal settlement with Trump because he didn’t like how a campaign interview with Kamala was edited. Really? If CBS caves, the belief that we have an independent media protected by the First Amendment is undermined. CBS: stand tall. Support the Constitution.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 24, 2025
But that’s not the only way to look at this. Alternatively, CBS News may be sitting on the evidence that they really did bend over backwards to edit the clip of Harris for her benefit and they now see a settlement as a better option than letting people get a good look at how they operate. Or more likely it could be a combination of both things. They don’t want the lawsuit to interfere with the merger and they don’t want it on the record that their flagship news program was in the tank for Democrats.
In any case, CBS News employees are alarmed that Trump might win this one.
Despite legal experts’ widespread assertion that CBS’ editorial judgment was protected by the First Amendment, The New York Times Thursday night reported that a settlement was in the works.
That sparked outage in CBS’ newsroom.
“Trump’s lawsuit was a joke, but if we settle, we become the laughingstock,” a CBS correspondent said on condition of anonymity.
I have no idea if Trump’s lawsuit had any merit but even if something isn’t a winner legally it can still be highly embarrassing and detrimental to CBS’s brand. Frankly, I hope they fight so we eventually get the truth about their creative editing and what motivated it.
