Trump triumphs: Paramount, CBS settle over Kamala Harris’ ’60 Minutes’ interview

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the liberal media pulled out all the stops to portray President Donald Trump in a negative light and to present his Democratic opponent as halfway intelligible.

According to an October report from the Media Research Center, the broadcast evening news coverage of the race was the most lopsided in history, with ABC, CBS, and NBC treating Kamala Harris to 78% positive coverage and Trump to 85% negative coverage.

Late in the media’s partisan persuasion campaign, Harris sat down for an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” The heavily edited version of the interview that aired on Oct. 7 proved to be a complete disaster not only for the Democratic candidate but for the liberal network and its parent company, which now has to pay a steep price to the great displeasure of liberal media personalities.

Trump sued CBS News over the interview on Oct. 31, 2024, accusing the network of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion calculated to (a) confuse, deceive, and mislead the public, and (b) attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party as the heated 2024 Presidential Election — which President Trump is leading — approaches its conclusion.”

Trump initially sued for $10 billion but then increased his claim in a subsequent filing to $20 billion.

‘CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle.’

Paramount, CBS News’ parent company, announced late Tuesday that it will settle the action, which CBS said in a court filing just days earlier was a “meritless lawsuit” that takes aim at a news organization “for editorial decisions Plaintiffs dislike.”

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Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Under the agreement — which the Freedom of the Press Foundation pre-emptively threatened to sue Paramount over — $16 million will be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library and to the president’s fees and costs, reported CBS News.

Blaze News has reached out to the White House for comment.

“With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital. “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle. President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American People as he continues on his singular mission to Make America Great Again.”

This outcome greatly resembles Trump’s settlement with ABC.

Trump sued ABC and George Stephanopoulos last year over a March 10, 2024, interview wherein the ABC News host falsely stated that the Republican had been found liable by multiple juries for the rape of E. Jean Carroll.

To the great chagrin of liberal talking heads, ABC settled the action in December, agreeing to pay both $15 million to Trump’s future presidential library and $1 million in legal fees to Trump’s attorneys.

The big difference between the two settlements appears to be that CBS will not apologize for its Emmy-nominated interview, whereas ABC appended an editor’s note to the bottom of the article corresponding with its offending interview that expressed regret for the false statements.

Paramount did, however, agree that moving forward, “60 Minutes” will release transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates in the future, “subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”

‘CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before.’

CBS initially refused to release the unedited transcript of its Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview, prompting complaints and finally an intervention by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC, which received a formal complaint on Oct. 16 from the Center for American Rights requesting an investigation into possible news distortion, released the raw footage and full transcript on Feb. 5.

The footage confirmed critics’ suspicions and demonstrated the great lengths taken by the network to make Harris appear intelligible and concise.

RELATED: When the mainstream media’s left-wing bias costs them credibility

Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

For instance, Bill Whitaker of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” asked Harris at one stage in the interview whether America lacked influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his strategic decisions in the Middle East. Whitaker then stated, “It seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening” to the Biden-Harris administration.

Blaze News previously reported that the version of the interview that went to air and was reflected in CBS News’ official transcript was edited so that Harris appears to say in response, “We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

It’s clear from the raw footage that Harris actually responded with one of her signature word salads:

Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. And we’re not going to stop doing that. We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.

There were multiple cases of similar edits made with the apparent intention of making Harris appear more coherent.

After the FCC released the full interview in February, Trump stated, “CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before. They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview. This was Election changing ‘stuff,’ Election Interference and, quite simply, Election Fraud at a level never seen before.”

The settlement is not the only cause for demoralization at CBS.

Wendy McMahon stepped down as president of CBS News in May, noting in a statement, “It’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”

The previous month, longtime “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens resigned, stating in a memo, “Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

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