President Trump is reportedly demanding more than double what CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is offering to settle his lawsuit over Vice President Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview.
A veteran media reporter, Matthew Belloni, reported in his well-read “What I’m Hearing” newsletter that Mr. Trump’s legal team “demanded” $50 million to settle his lawsuit in what was described as a “take-it-or-leave-it situation” for Paramount.
Mr. Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over its editing of Ms. Harris’s October 2024 “60 Minutes” interview, which removed a “word salad” from the beginning of her answer to a question about Israel, making her sound more coherent. The edit came at a time when the vice president was facing questions about her ability to speak intelligently about important issues without scripted remarks or a non-journalist interviewer.
Mr. Trump told reporters in February that he believed that CBS should have to pay “a lot” to settle his lawsuit, but he has not publicly stated what amount he would view as sufficient. Paramount executives had offered the president $15 million and the president was said to be seeking “more than $25 million,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
“That’s true,” Mr. Belloni said of the Journal’s “more than $25 million” figure. But he went on to specify that this number was $50 million and that it came with a 48-hour deadline to respond, “take it or leave it.” However, the two sides — which were working with a professional mediator — failed to reach an agreement, and the talks “ended with a whimper” earlier this month, according to a prior report from Mr. Belloni.
After the flurry of negotiations, Mr. Trump’s team began to ramp up the pressure on Paramount (including by threatening a new defamation lawsuit over another “60 Minutes” segment), which Mr. Belloni notes raises the question of what figure will convince the president that he has “squeezed” the non-executive chairwoman of Paramount, Shari Redstone, enough to declare victory.
Paramount did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Mr. Belloni did not get into another issue that could emerge as a major sticking point. The Journal also reports that the Trump team wants an apology. It’s not clear what form of apology it is requesting. If it involves an on-camera admission of fault by a CBS News staffer, this could prove a very difficult situation to resolve.
Ms. Redstone and her family are desperate to ensure the merger of Paramount and Skydance is approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which has held up the deal. Multiple reports indicate she believes that settling Mr. Trump’s lawsuit is the way to ensure the Skydance deal is approved.
The Trump-appointed chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, has said that the “60 Minutes” lawsuit is unrelated to his agency’s review of the Skydance deal. However, the FCC is doing a “news distortion” investigation of CBS, also over the Harris interview. These investigations can lead to a fine.
CBS was fined $550,000 for Janet Jackson’s notorious “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. The fine was later thrown out by an appeals court. In Paramount’s thinking, according to published reports, a settlement between Paramount and Mr. Trump over the same issue that’s the subject of the FCC investigation could unblock the Skydance merger’s path to consummation.
Paramount’s board had agreed to pay up to $20 million to settle the lawsuit, the Journal previously reported. However, media insiders have speculated that the settlement might reach as high as $75 million.
The Skydance deal would be worth billions of dollars if it is approved and would hand the Redstone family $2.4 billion. However, it would also ensure Ms. Redstone does not have to pay a $400 million kill fee if the merger is rejected, leaving her in a position to find a new buyer for Paramount, which is desperately in need of cash — as one of the last remaining major studios in Hollywood — and has seen its market cap shrink by more than 70 percent, to $8 billion from $30 billion, since 2018.
Skydance is controlled by David Ellison, whose father, Larry, is the fourth richest American. If Mr. Ellison’s purchase of Paramount does not go through, the company will likely end up in the hands of a private equity firm and be dismantled. This could impact thousands of jobs and gigs in the struggling entertainment business.
Ms. Redstone has recused herself from conversations about a settlement and left it up to Paramount executives, who are reportedly beginning to get concerned about the idea of settling Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. Some executives have raised concerns that settling the lawsuit could expose them to legal risks, such as possible criminal charges or civil suits, as it could be perceived as a bribe.
Indeed, three powerful, liberal Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden, sent a letter to Ms. Redstone warning that settling the lawsuit — with the hope that it would lead to the Skydance deal being approved — could be seen as a bribe and violate the law.
A media columnist for the New York Post, Charles Gasparino, reported that Paramount executives are concerned that their Directors and Officers liability insurance would not cover their legal for criminal investigations or civil lawsuits related to allegations of bribery. A settlement could be interpreted as bribery if the judgment of coastal legal observers — that Mr. Trump’s lawsuit is “frivolous” and “without merit” — is brought into play. However, the Texas judge overseeing the case, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative Trump appointee, has rebuffed multiple efforts by CBS to dismiss the suit, and the case is heading into the deposition phase.
While Paramount is reportedly growing nervous about a settlement, Mr. Trump’s team seems to be increasingly turning up the pressure to get a payout. This week, an attorney for the president, Ed Paltzik, told the Washington Free Beacon that anti-Trump coverage by “60 Minutes” could lead to another lawsuit.
“During ongoing settlement talks, CBS News and Paramount aired a new, defamatory ‘60 Minutes’ segment regarding President Trump’s legitimate and necessary executive orders addressing unlawful activity in the legal profession, including election interference and employment discrimination,” Mr. Paltzik said. “CBS and Paramount’s attempts to subvert the legal process with lies and smears may necessitate additional corrective legal action, which President Trump reserves the right to pursue.”
His comment referred to a story “60 Minutes” aired about Mr. Trump’s executive orders targeting large law firms that employed or advised his adversaries.
The story featured an attorney, Marc Elias, who, during the runup to the 2016 election, was key in getting the research firm Fusion GPS to compile what has become known as the “Steele Dossier,” which accused Mr. Trump’s campaign of colluding with Russian operatives to boost his electoral prospects.
The “60 Minutes” story left that piece of information out. In the segment, Mr. Elias accused the president of “trying to intimidate [law firms] the way in which a mob boss intimidates people in the neighborhood that he is seeking to either exact protection money from or engage in other nefarious conduct.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers submitted a filing seeking to prevent his ongoing lawsuit from being dismissed. The filing said the “deceptively edited” interview caused “widespread confusion and mental anguish” for the public and the president.
The move by Paramount to offer $15 million was reported by the Journal to be an attempt to keep the settlement in line with recent payouts by other companies to help avoid the appearance of a bribe. Disney agreed to pay Mr. Trump $16 million after an ABC News host, George Stephanopoulos, falsely and repeatedly said the president had been “found liable for rape.” Meanwhile, Meta paid the president $25 million to settle a lawsuit against the social media platform for suspending his accounts after the January 6 riot.
CBS News, which opposes any settlement or apology, is currently adrift following the forced ouster of the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, and the CEO of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, in the last five weeks. Their departures are linked to the Trump lawsuit and also to CBS News’s anti-Israel programming and editorial standards policies, as well as a botched reimagining of the “CBS Evening News” overseen by Mr. Owens.
With their departure, it seemed that a settlement could be coming soon. However, the reported gap between what Paramount wants to pay and what Mr. Trump is demanding could complicate the negotiations.
Paramount has stated it hopes that the Skydance deal will close in the first half of the year. In April, the FCC extended the deadline for the review of the Skydance merger to July 6, meaning time is running short if Paramount hopes the settlement will pave the way for the merger to be approved on their stated timeline.
