Paramount Global is looking to settle President Donald Trump’s meritless lawsuit against its CBS News division—and the current proposal is terrible, even by Trump-era standards.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways for companies to get the litigation-happy Trump off their back: They can choose to give him millions of dollars in cash, or they can choose to give him millions of dollars in free services. Paramount is taking a different approach by reportedly offering both cash on the barrelhead, as other media outlets have, as well as millions of dollars worth of free services, a hallmark of recent law firm settlements with the administration.
Since bribery remains technically—and only technically—illegal, companies can’t just write the president an eight-figure check to secure some protection. Trump has solved that problem, though, by bringing baseless lawsuits that allow for that cash to be treated as a “settlement.” Think of it as a mobster using the judicial system to launder protection money.
Trump has no real legal basis for these suits, but that doesn’t matter. They’re a cudgel to ensure compliance with the administration’s agenda. And hey, if Trump gets some extra millions out of these deals, that’s just the cost of doing business.
Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News claims that its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris caused him $20 billion worth of “mental anguish.”
Before Trump even took office, ABC News gave him $15 million for his presidential library and an additional $1 million for legal costs to settle Trump’s spurious defamation suit against the network. See also Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which gave Trump $25 million to close the books on his lawsuit over how he had been harmed by having his account on Facebook suspended after he incited an insurrection. Elon Musk agreed to settle Trump’s lawsuit against X over basically the same thing, giving Trump $10 million on top of the quarter-billion he spent to get Trump elected.
Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount was spurred by a “60 Minutes interview” with Vice President Kamala Harris, which Trump alleges was edited to show Harris in a better light. That’s rich coming from someone who continually benefits from the mainstream media sanewashing his incoherent rhetoric.
Paramount offered $15 million to get out from under the lawsuit, but Trump wants $25 million to cover what he said was $20 billion worth of “mental anguish” and CBS damaging his role as a “content creator.” Yes, the sitting president essentially wants Paramount to give him money because they made him sad and hurt him in his role as an influencer. The so-called leader of the free world is behaving like an Instagram influencer suing someone for stealing their vibe.
Except in this case, the plaintiff can bring the full weight of the government to bear because Paramount needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its pending merger with film production company Skydance Media. Trump’s pick for the head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, is extremely eager to use the agency to carry out Trump’s political attacks. Before Carr even got in the door, he had already said he’d consider Trump’s FCC complaint against CBS, which tracks Trump’s lawsuit, and that the complaint “is something that is likely to arise in the FCC’s review of that transaction.” The entirely unsubtle message here is that Carr will use Trump’s spurious allegations about CBS News to block a multibillion-dollar merger.
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So, Paramount bigwigs feel like they need to settle this, but it looks like they can’t get it done with cash alone. One possible settlement proposal would require CBS to run millions of dollars in public service ads for the administration’s pet causes, like fighting antisemitism and helping veterans. Of course, the administration isn’t actually committed to either of those causes. Trump has hired numerous bigots with histories of antisemitic remarks, and of course Elon Musk, after throwing two Nazi salutes at the inauguration, was rewarded with getting to destroy the government via his stint leading the Department of Government Efficiency. As for veterans? Trump is gutting the Department of Veterans Affairs, proposing to cut tens of thousands of employees, and has already compromised the health care available to those who served our country.
Nonetheless, Paramount appears willing to pretend that Trump is sincere about these issues and ready to agree to air millions of dollars’ worth of public service ads to push Trump’s interests. This would normally be the sort of thing the FCC would jump at reviewing, but newly installed Commissioner Carr is certainly not going to try to scuttle a deal that gives Trump everything he wants.
While Paramount might want to pretend that the offer of free PSAs will involve generically nice spots about fighting bigotry and protecting veterans, Trump’s deals with law firms show otherwise. In order to sidestep a Trump executive order targeting them, some big-name law firms have pledged a total of nearly $1 billion in free legal services to the administration, and it’s becoming pretty clear those free legal services will be deployed for whatever Trump wants.
The executive order, declaring that Trump was “strengthening and unleashing” law enforcement, said that those fancy firms will represent random law enforcement officers facing charges or civil suits over misconduct.
If Paramount wants a look at its future should executives agree to this deal, peep Trump ally Greta Van Susteren, who cold-called one of the firms, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, to demand they handle a case for a veteran who wants to sue a Michigan judge for issuing a protective order during his divorce proceedings. After Skadden said they could not represent the veteran but could offer services in a support role, Van Susteren went on X to blast Skadden as “disgraceful”—making sure to tag Trump, of course.
No doubt CBS News will love getting calls from all of the MAGA movement’s lesser lights, demanding they film freebie ads for whatever bee they’ve got in their bonnet that week. It’s just the price of bending the knee to Trump.
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