I'm sure you all remember this from July 2, 2025, in what might have been once considered an act of unsurpassed cowardice, but is now just shrugged off as the price of doing business under the Trump regime:
Paramount, President Trump reach $16 million settlement over "60 Minutes" lawsuit
Paramount will settle President Trump's lawsuit over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris for $16 million, the company announced late Tuesday.
CBS News' parent company worked with a mediator to resolve the lawsuit. Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump's future presidential library and the plaintiffs' fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement...
Paramount also agreed that "60 Minutes" will release transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates in the future, "subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns," the statement said.
Mr. Trump's lawsuit, filed last October when he was still a candidate for president, was widely viewed as an attack on the First Amendment. He took issue with CBS News airing two different portions of Harris' response to a question about the Middle East, one in an early excerpt on "Face the Nation" and the other on the full broadcast of "60 Minutes." ...
He initially sought $10 billion in damages when he filed suit last October but upped his demand to $20 billion in February after adding a federal claim alleging false advertising and unfair competition. Jackson, a Texas Republican, joined Mr. Trump as a plaintiff in the amended complaint...
Weeks later, Wendy McMahon, who served as president and CEO of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, announced she was also departing. "It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on a path forward," she wrote in a note to staffers.
CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’
Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free pressThe CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.
Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.
While 60 Minutes traditionally cuts down interviews, these edits are particularly notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, then the vice-president, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election...
During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.
“Actually, 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.
The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.
“I think you have a great new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise, is a great – from what I know,” he said.
A composite image of a woman speaking into a mic and a man seated behind a desk.Who will Bari Weiss pick as the next anchor of CBS Evening News?
Trump was particularly effusive in praising David Ellison and his father, Larry, the new owner of CBS News’s parent company, Paramount, through their company Skydance Media.
“I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership,” Trump said. “I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”
O’Donnell did not directly respond to the president’s comments about Weiss and the Ellisons.
Among Trump’s many answers that were edited out were several comments questioning the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, which he said “was rigged and stolen”.
At one point in the interview, in a segment that was not aired on the broadcast, Trump tried to get O’Donnell to acknowledge that crime was down in Washington DC, where she lives.
“You live here. You know that too,” Trump said, asking O’Donnell: “Do you see a difference?”
“I think I’ve been working too hard,” O’Donnell responded. “I haven’t been out and about that much … I get in my car and go to work and I go home.”
Trump said “that’s not a fair answer” and insisted that O’Donnell noticed a difference...
