President Donald Trump’s $16 million settlement with CBS News is a demoralizing blow for the Democrats and the “Fake News” machine that supports them.
The deal adds to a streak of impressive wins for Trump, who has spent months steamrolling over liberal opponents in media and higher education.
Trump accused CBS of interfering in the 2024 presidential election with its favorable editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, his Democrat rival.
The “60 Minutes” interview featured a clipped version of Harris’s word salad response to a question about Israel.
A teaser that appeared on “Face The Nation” included a longer portion of Harris’s long-winded answer.
Critics of CBS accused the network of helping Harris, who was frequently criticized on the campaign trail for spewing “word salad.”
The network vehemently denied conscious manipulation.
At the time, the network said:
“’60 Minutes’ gave an excerpt of our interview to ‘Face the Nation’ that used a longer section of her answer than that on ‘60 Minutes.’
“Same question. Same answer.
“But a different portion of the response.”
Trump sued CBS in October for trying to “tip the scales” in the home stretch of a dramatic and heated election campaign.
Initially, Trump’s lawyers demanded an eye-watering $10 billion in damages before doubling the number to a staggering $20 billion.
Some CBS honchos quit the network in protest as parent company Paramount started negotiating with the second Trump administration.
The Trump admin has the power to approve a planned merger between Paramount and Skydance Media.
Trump rejected Paramount’s initial offer of $15 million, with Trump lawyers pushing for over $25 million and a full apology.
Finally, in July, Paramount caved.
The company agreed to pay $16 million toward Trump’s presidential library.
CBS also agreed to release all unedited transcripts of its interviews with presidential candidates in the future, and they will pay Trump’s legal fees.
“CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” a Trump spokesperson said.
“President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American People.”
CBS did get one victory: they are not required to apologize.
Trump had previously settled a defamation case with ABC News, which agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s future library over comments from anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Trump has also extracted concessions from “woke” universities and law firms.
The president is not done, however.
He is still pushing Congress to defund public broadcasters NPR and PBS over their partisan advocacy.
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