Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Lawsuit Could Destroy Journalism

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

A bogus lawsuit, a media merger, and a newsroom on the brink. Tim and JVL break down Trump’s latest power play.

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I'm here with my buddy, JVL, author of the Triad newsletter, which you should absolutely be subscribing to. Go to thebulwark.com to subscribe to it. We've got some news today out of CBS. More updates. Me and Bill Kristol talked about the latest know, the latest on, you know, Disney's running fold with Donald Trump, where Disney settled with Trump over George Stephanopoulos, and then Trump sent out a bleat over the weekend, basically saying, that was not enough.

You need to settle with me again. You know, so you see what you get on these settlements. Anyway, on the CBS side of the ledger, we have news that CBS News president and CEO Wendy McMahon is stepping down from the network. In a memo to staff, she cited leadership differences. Quote, it's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. I think we all know what that's all about. But JVL, why don't you paint people a picture? Boy, it's wild, isn't it? So trump has filed a lawsuit against cbs news in 60 minutes and paramount the allegation being that they ran an interview with kamala harris during the campaign and edited it the

video was edited so that it could fit within the confines of a 60 minute television show which i assume has like you know 16 minutes of commercials in it and anyway uh like one of the stupidest things you've ever seen but of course it's not really a lawsuit it is uh legalized and ritualized bribery because what happens is the parent company, it's a shakedown. The parent company is trying to have a merger, Paramount and Skydance, and this has to be approved by the federal government. And having a ridiculous lawsuit is a way for them to pay the person of the president, again, as a private citizen. They're going to pay him as a private citizen so that he can then direct his government to approve their corporate merger.

And the best part of it all is that when they settle in the settlement, I assume a nondisclosure agreement will be wrapped up inside of all of it. So this is really one of those things where Donald Trump has been an innovator in American life, that he's figured out how to use civil litigation to extort government favors. And honestly, I'm amazed that nobody invented this before or realized that you could do this. I guess I feel like Ron Burgundy. I can't believe you ate the whole wheel of cheese. I'm not even mad. And we had the longtime head of 60 Minutes stepped down a few weeks ago. And today, Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News.

And what that tells me is that the resignations are going all the way up the line. And there are two things I want to talk about, Tim. Yeah. We should mention the Bill Owens, right? So this is the second top, top resignation. Right. That's right. Sorry.

Bill Owens had left a couple weeks ago and now Wendy McMahon. First of all, it is interesting to me that private sector executives and producers have more gumption and willingness to resign in protest than elected representatives in the Republican Party. It's kind of something, isn't it? Or top staffers that are instituting the program. You know, like we've seen some career staffers quit from the government, but. Yeah, but not political appointees, right? No. That's really striking. But I wonder how much of CBS news is going to get burned to the ground on the way to this murder. And that's what I'm curious to hear your take on, because, I mean, I wonder what will be left. Right. don't know who it's going to be so far cbs the people at cbs news are being pretty impressive in their gumption and i think they deserve a lot of credit for that i mean you could see it going a lot of ways right because so you start from the basis

that like linear tv is dying right so cbs is a news brand is dying. And it's in kind of like even worse shape, really, than, you know, the other, you know, networks who have like more spinoff opportunities into streaming, you know, into other options. And so, you know, so that so that like decline is happening already. Right. And so then this all this controversy happening in the context of that. Right. Which is, you know, Trump shaking them down, apparently successfully as part, you know, as part of this merger. And then assuming this merger actually goes through at this point, there's no reason to not think that this merger will go through because. Paramount has made clear that they will do whatever it takes. Right.

To make it go through right and so then on the other side of that i guess you could imagine a okay all right we appeased him and now we're going to go back to business as usual and he's going to send mean bleats about us but he doesn't have any control over us that's like the best case scenario, right? But isn't the more likely scenario that this is just, you know, kind of like any other like hedge fund strip mining of a declining company, you know, for like the remaining assets, right? Like a private equity company coming into a business that was already declining and just trying to figure out how to squeeze some

dollars out of it on the way out. I mean, I just think that's what CBS ends up looking like, right? Like on the back end of this, which is you cut a ton of the overhead and spending and it is a, you know, not like it's not, not becomes like a Fox news style mouthpiece, but it just ends up becoming like kind of a toothless, you know, very even be in the news business or that. Right. I mean, if under the new ownership where what Skydance really wants is Paramount, they're really there for fiction and movies and streaming. They want Paramount Plus.

And as you say, it's not like NBC where they have MSNBC. They have a whole network. Peacock, you know, can's not like NBC where they have MSNBC, they have a whole network. Peacock, you know, can be part of a streaming thing. Like this is all they've got. It's just like the CBS News thing, which is like, you know, four different pieces, right? They have a morning show, evening show, the news magazine and the Sunday show. Like at some point, like, I i don't know is it worth the trouble yeah i mean this is where we you know uh it's good like i don't want to get like dylan byers

or max tanny or something one of these media reporters in because my guess is that it is still like that those flagship news programs are still making money right now yeah right right and so so i guess you would want to like probably keep them i don't like look you look at cbs sunday morning right it's like the saw their soft interview focus show like why not just turn all of cbs news into that right nobody's gonna be mad at you i'm trying to tell you that you know you can do a segment once a quarter on melania talks about whatever her interests are you know uh like a whatever her interests are, you know, uh,

like a BS thing. And then, you know, you'd also have some other soft focus segments on, you know, whatever, uh, doctors,

you know, coming up with cures to research, going with cures to new diseases or what, you know what I mean? All of that kind of stuff. Like, why not just turn it all into that where, you know,

you're still getting the revenue and you're not getting the risk. And I just think that seems to be the obvious direction. Where along that spectrum they go, I don't know. But the investigative holding the administration and power to account, it seems to me that they're checking out of that business. at minimum until the merger and maybe forever. Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to see how you put this stuff back together again. And I want this is a real question. I wonder if the people at CBS at the highest levels, if they understood in 2016 that Donald Trump was an extinction level event for their news division?

Of course not. The opposite. It was Les Mufas with CBS. The guy that said it was going to be bad for the country but good for our bottom line. No, of course not. Of course they didn't. There's a lesson there, I think. Oh, yeah.

A real lesson. It's related to all the foreign policy stuff that we're doing right now in the Middle East. Everybody's like, oh, we're just going to, if we just change to make the only consideration short-term financial interests. If the only thing that we consider is short-term financial interests in every deal that we make, then everything will turn out okay. That's the savvy move. Yeah. Don't notice that bond rates just went over five percent for the first time since april don't worry about the bond market at all

what a fucking world we're in jvl um any other final thoughts on cbs from you i i feel very very bad for all of the real journalists me too i'm glad'm glad you mentioned that. Because I don't know what, you know, they have real people doing real important work there. Not all of them. Nobody's perfect. But it's a pretty, it's a pretty serious, as these things go,

CBS is a pretty serious broadcast network in terms of news and journalism. And there are a lot of people there whose livelihoods are threatened

and whose jobs are simply going to, as you said, just go away. That stuff is going to stop happening anymore. And that's bad for them. And it's bad for America. Yeah, I totally agree with that.

It is worth saying. And, you know, obviously, 60 Minutes has done a lot of good stuff, but they do good reporting across the news division there. I mean, a lot of people that are actually doing journalism. And I do think that I don't think it's an extinction level event like an atomic bomb that's just going to go away. You know, to me, it just looks like you end up in an area of managed decline where, like, the people that face the most acute tough choices are in the division that was supposed to be doing investigation of administration stuff. And, like, all this other stuff over here, like, you're fine if you're investigating facebook still or investigating you know the big banks right so like some of that stuff over there is still gonna like continue um while the rest of this

stuff you know um gets gets shoved off and it's it's tough it's a tough one uh well anyway there you go you're good here no worries at the bulwark so subscribe to the subscribe to the feed we ain't going anywhere uh and we'll be back here soon uh so we'll see you then peace