Paramount has agreed to settle Donald Trump’s lawsuit over what he called “deceptive editing” in regard to the airing of a 60 Minutes interview last year with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign.
Paramount’s $16 million payment will reportedly be paid to Trump’s future presidential library.
Paramount agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that Trump claimed “60 Minutes” deceptively edited to interfere with the election. Read more: https://trib.al/xDMS1Fl [image or embed]
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) July 2, 2025 at 2:55 AM
From the New York Times:
As part of the settlement, Paramount said that it had agreed to release written transcripts of future “60 Minutes” interviews with presidential candidates. The company said that the settlement did not include an apology.
Many lawyers had dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit as baseless and believed that CBS would have ultimately prevailed in court, in part because the network did not report anything factually inaccurate, and the First Amendment gives publishers wide leeway to determine how to present information.
Some executives at the company viewed the president’s lawsuit as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance, which requires the Trump administration’s approval.
Transcripts of the Harris interview showed she’d given a lengthy answer to a question regarding Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The network aired a 21-second clip of the interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” then used a different 7-second clip for “60 Minutes.”
Trump claimed in his lawsuit that amounted to “news distortion.”
Of course, as the Times notes, the real reason Paramount settled was to ensure that the big-ticket sale of the company to Skydance could proceed.
CBS’s parent company Paramount settled Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against 60 Minutes.
Reminder that Paramount needs approval from Trump’s FCC to be acquired by Skydance for $8 billion. Surrendering to Trump’s tyranny only invites more of it. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b… [image or embed] — Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) July 2, 2025 at 7:59 AM
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