Trump Wants $25 Million To Settle His Meritless 60 Minutes Lawsuit
President Donald Trump is currently suing one of the largest media companies in the country because one of its subsidiaries lightly edited an interview with his political opponent. This week, he apparently declined a settlement offer, even though the lawsuit itself is completely frivolous and arguably an abuse of his power as president.
“Paramount Global in recent days has offered $15 million to settle,” The Wall Street Journal reported this week. “Trump’s team wants more than $25 million and is also seeking an apology from CBS News.”
The whole affair stems from an October 2024 interview that 60 Minutes conducted with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president. (Trump declined the chance to sit for a 60 Minutes interview of his own.)
In the interview, correspondent Bill Whitaker asked about Israel’s war in Gaza. CBS—the broadcast network owned by Paramount—aired separate portions of Harris’ answer, one on the 60 Minutes broadcast and a longer snippet on its Sunday morning show Face the Nation.
Trump seized on the different clips and accused CBS of doctoring Harris’ answer to make her look better. “Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer,” he wrote on X.
“They took the answer out in its entirety, threw it away, and they put another answer in,” he later said at a campaign rally. “And I think it’s the biggest scandal in broadcasting history.”
Trump sued CBS for $10 billion in “compensatory damages”—amended to $20 billion after he won the election and reassumed the presidency—under a Texas law against deceptive consumer practices. The lawsuit accused CBS of “unlawful acts of election and voter interference.”
The lawsuit was flawed from the start: Journalists editing interviewees’ answers for time or clarity is both routine and protected by the First Amendment.
And Harris’ answer in either clip is not exactly Churchillian: “Harris did not come across as especially forthright, articulate, or intelligent in either version, although the one that 60 Minutes showed was a little more concise,” Reason‘s Jacob Sullum observed. If CBS were trying to do her a favor by swapping out her
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