Paramount, the owner of CBS News, announced late Tuesday it had agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit alleged that “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make it more favorable to her in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, making it one of the most laughably absurd lawsuits Trump has ever filed. But Paramount is forking over millions anyway in what many are calling a transparent bribe. And at least one elected Democrat says he’s not going to let it stand.
Sen. Ron Wyden, a progressive Democrat from Oregon, is not happy with the deal reached by Paramount, which will see the media company pay for Trump’s legal fees and hand millions to his presidential library. Paramount Global is trying to merge with Skydance Media, something that Trump will now be able to greenlight.
“Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval,” Wyden wrote on Bluesky. “When Democrats retake power, I’ll be first in line calling for federal charges. In the meantime, state prosecutors should make the corporate execs who sold out our democracy answer in court, today.”
Wyden wasn’t the only Democrat upset with the deal. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Dems, said the Redstone family, major owners of Paramount, had settled a “bogus lawsuit” and it set a dangerous precedent for both the First Amendment and what he called “government extortion.”
“Paramount’s decision will only embolden Trump to continue attacking, suing and intimidating the media which he has labeled ‘the enemy of the people.’” Sanders said in a statement published by reporter Max Tani on Bluesky. “It is a dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press—an essential part of our democracy. It is a victory for a president who is attempting to stifle dissent and undermine American democracy.”
Sanders went on to say it’s “pretty obvious” why Paramount was choosing to “surrender to Trump.”
“The Redstone family is in line to receive $2.4 billion from the sale of Paramount to Skydance, but they can only receive this money if the Trump administration approves this deal,” Sanders wrote. “In other words, the Redstone family diminished the freedom of the press today in exchange for a $2.4 billion payday.”
The part that makes all of this so ridiculous is that “60 Minutes” clearly did nothing wrong. Trump says the video was edited to make Harris look better. But if you look at the unedited interview and compare it to what aired, there’s absolutely nothing substantively different. The average viewer didn’t get a different answer than what she meant to communicate. Every edit made was clearly part of the regular splicing and dicing that happens when TV news organizations are trying to cut something together to match time constraints without significantly altering what’s been said.
On top of it all, Harris lost. It’s not like Trump can even argue that Harris benefited from the interview in a way that changed the outcome of the election. He’s just a sore winner and trying to use every tool at his disposal to advance his fascist agenda. And unless Democrats are able to radically change things, they won’t even get a chance to file those bribery charges while they’re in the minority.
ABC News and Meta have also reached multi-million dollar agreements to settle frivolous lawsuits with Trump which have also been seen as bribes. Those lawsuits also had no foundation but management agreed to pay anyway, just like Paramount. But as long as Trump can extort major media and technology companies, it seems like he’s just going to keep doing it.
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