Bulwark Takes - Was This A Bribe! CBS' $16 Million Surrender To Trump Is Complete

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Trump settled a lawsuit with Paramount/CBS over their editing of a 60 Minutes segment featuring Kamala Harris. He walked away with $16 million, without CBS admitting fault, fueling new claims of media bias and political manipulation.

Hey guys, it's me Sam Stein managing out at the Bullwark and I am so fortunate, so fortunate to be joined by Max Tani. He is the media reporter for Semaphore, longtime friend, sometimes nemesis. Max had some serious text nephews before getting on this recording, so I'm just glad that you got headphones that worked. I'll just say I wasn't the only person who had text nephews before. That's all I'm going to say. Fair enough. that worked and that we'll just say I wasn't the only person who had text net foods before. Let's say that. I'm going to say fair enough to say we're going to be talking about Paramount, which

decided that shame is worth 16 million dollars this morning had a settlement with the Trump administration. No, it's not with the Trump administration Trump for totally and I think this is a totally objective way to describe it an incredibly bogus lawsuit around the editing of 60 minutes transcript from the campaign people have been following but today got a resolution 16 million dollars max give us like the sort of outline of the settlement and then I have like five or six questions I just want to pepper you with. Yeah, last night, right around midnight, Paramount corporate, which owns CBS, it's the owner of the studio is Paramount Studios as well, announced that it was settling a lawsuit with

the Trump campaign that the campaign filed at the end, very end of the 2024 contest. Basically, this had been centered around the editing of a 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris. What makes this different than some other major lawsuits against media organizations is that 60 minutes didn't actually do anything wrong. And Trump wasn't suing them for defamation. He was suing them for something called news distortion. It's a much more kind of obscure, never pretty much never used statute law, basically guide guidelines around what's allowed to be on the public airwaves and whether or not basically a media organization

has changed the news to mislead the public. It's very bizarre. It's very strange, but it's different than what the challenges that most media organizations face here. Didn't at one point his legal team say that the editing of the transcript caused Trump mental anguish. Yes, it did. They did say it cost a mental anguish and explain that did Trump's mental anguish. I mean, he does seem at times to be an anguished person. You know, you've seen that. I guess it's true. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, what is that? What does that really

mean? I don't know. Maybe they would call a psychologist or a therapist to testify. But essentially, Paramount decided that it was fighting this in court, but that it wanted to reach a settlement. Last night, it did reach settlement for $16 million as well as a future agreement to release the transcript of all interviews with presidential candidates on only president only presidential candidates. I believe that that's what the that is that's what Paramount announced. I don't know 60 minutes like what if I don't really be a evening. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that they're going to be releasing the transcripts of all interviews on 60 minutes They just said as it relates to presidential presidential candidates. I look I mean, I'm not opposed to that

I think that that's like yes, they weren't yeah Were they not doing that already? I don't know. Yeah, and then but but crucially crucially They also said that they were not going to apologize for this You know for the editing of the this interview, which was something that the Trump the Trump campaign had sought. They had sought an apology from from 60 minutes. And that had been something that had been holding all of this up as far as I that's my understanding of it. What a win. What a win for Paramount. Not apologizing for basic journalistic practices. This is all basically, first of all, obviously I find this ridiculous and kind of offensive. But you know, this is also business, right? Like Paramount is trying to, you know, they want to sell to Skydance. And there's a huge merger that the administration has to sign off on. And that was just hanging over all this.

And the head of Paramount, she read some wanted wanted it done. Now she said, well, I recused from all this stuff. But then, you know, it's clear she wanted the deal done. It wasn't hiding. But then the other thing that was happening was that Paramount has a new board elections coming up and there was some complications about whether they would be comfortable with such a settlement. So how much was this just strictly business?

I mean, it's hard to see this as anything other than business. CBS obviously fights a number of other law fights lawsuits all the time, like any other major organization. It's you don't hear about a lot of them. But it's this is a news organization. This is one of the oldest major news organizations in the country. One of the oldest broadcast organizations in the country. They've been fighting this for a very long time.

And it's very unusual for them to pay out when they could win in court to pay out millions of dollars to the president, a president who they're going to continue to cover. So even though they said, right. So even though they said, oh, this has nothing, they in their release This has nothing to do with the ongoing merger investigation It's just it's obvious that this is that this is a factor and that they want something. It's like Play with these two things one. What if Brendan Carr the head of the FCC is just like, yeah Not gonna approve the merger. Thank you. It's still good. That's totally that's it's totally valid I mean, I I don't believe that it would would be I'm not a I'm not an anti I'm not a regular federal

regulatory expert when it comes to local station ownership. But it would be a totally he's totally within his rights to do that. And we've we've we've also seen that organizations that have capitulated to Trump, you know, have still also faced face scrutiny. Disney famously paid out the very similar amount in the transition after the 2024 election to the Trump campaign over George Stephanopoulos segment in which he actually did make some mistakes. And that was a defamation case. Carr still said it was looking at still said the FCC afterwards after Trump took office. Brendan Carr still said he was looking into Disney and its DEI practices. So clearly

it hasn't stopped the administration from scrutinizing these media organizations. And what's the stop again, we're imagining a future, but like, you know, 60 minutes or any other CBS enterprise does some story that Trump doesn't like and he thinks it's caused him more mental anguish. Nothing in this settlement says he won't sue again, obviously. I mean, the funny thing, and I was talking to somebody at CBS about this is, I mean, the funniest thing would be if Trump tomorrow oversaw, I mean, they cover him every single day. Every day.

They're a news organization. They cover the news. They have an evening news broadcast every day. They have very popular weekly broadcasts as well. I mean, they could just pick out something they didn't like and just sue again. Right. What are they going to do? Like you said, the guy is afflicted with mental anxiety and anguish.

I mean, who knows what could set him off, right? He might be watching this. What is this? So that being, let's go to the original sin here. Well maybe it's not the original sin, but let's go to the ABC lawsuit. That was the first one. Stephanopoulos had misrepresented to a degree the issue around E. Jean Carroll, the Trump campaign, Susan for defamation, ABC says, we don't want to go and deal with this.

We're going to just get it out of the way. $60 million. They didn't want to clear it to me. They didn't want to deal with discovery. That was the first big lawsuit and that was the first quick settlement. And to me, and this is maybe I'm misrepresenting this, but to me, that set the standard. And once Trump recognized that he could do that, and get $60 million gift

for his library, which I'm sure who will never take any money from that. Once once that happens, it sets the stage for everything else. Yeah, I mean, it absolutely does. And it's really interesting. They didn't really get as much backlash to that. I was thinking about this today. Are you sure?

I mean, there were definitely some people who were critical of them. Maybe we're just blown away that it happened. Well, I think that there's a few things going on. One, the backlash isn't nearly as strong as it has been here. I mean, you have Democratic senators saying that they believe that Paramount broke the law and that this is essentially a bribe being paid towards Trump and that when Democrats retake oversight power and potentially when they retake the White House,

that this is something that they're going to be looking at, that's not something that happened in Disney's case. So I do think the degree is much greater when it comes to Paramount, no question. Right. But to me, it's like, this is like, ABC was the Paul Weiss of the situation, right? Like Paul Weiss was the first from Tocqueville. Guinea Pig. Right. And once Trump realized that, you know,

he can actually extort or get money from these people and that, you know, people would go crazy but that it would pass pretty quickly, then it just became, what's the next, you know, mole that I can whack? Right. Let's talk about Paramount, like, and the Democratic side of things. So in California, they're looking into whether this is a bribe because you can make the case,

well, they paid $16 million to have the opportunity to not foreclose the possibility, I should say, that the sale will go through. That's I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, so don't trust me on this one, but that seems like you can make the case that's a bribe. Yeah. I mean, this is a sale worth billions of dollars. And so this is something that obviously they see as a very small potential price to pay.

Sure. But, but, but yeah, I mean, I think the Democrats are going to continue to make that argument. We broke the news that California was going to be looking into this. They've actually asked for Bill Owens, the former executive producer of 60 Minutes, who resigned in protest over this. They've asked him to testify. They've also called Wendy McMahon, the former president of CBS News, who left shortly afterwards, who was forced out.

They've asked her to come and testify as well. And depending on what they decide to do, those could be very, very interesting testimonies if they decide to fight. Because both Owens and McMahon, it was pretty well known, were essentially, they were pushing back to Paramount and to Sherry Redstone over some of these. Bill Owens was pretty adamant about it. Bill didn't hide the ball. He said he felt pressure, right? Actually, that brings me to my last question. What is the, first of all,

I hope you're feeling better. You sound so- I'm cold. I have a little bit of a cold. I'm sure we'll edit, your fantastic producers will edit some of that out. No, no, we keep it real. We're leaving, yeah, we're leaving it all in.

Do you want me to send you some soup? You know what? You actually did send me some soup one time when I was sick at Politico. It was when I had COVID. That was very nice of you. Yeah, well that was my managerial trick during COVID is that when everyone got COVID, I would be like... You sent me some pho. It was very nice.

Yeah, I'm a totally fine boss. Yeah, you could send me some. If you want to send me some soup, you're welcome to. I feel pretty well. If you had made the original recording time, I would have sent you to. All right. Let's talk about the future of 60 minutes. So yeah, Bill Owens gone. I was, you know, Scott Pelley had that speech where is that Emory or I forget where it was,

but he had a graduation speech where he was just like the media needs to step it up. What is the mood in there right now? I mean, it's horrible. It's obviously horrible. It's been horrible for months. I mean, as this has dragged out and as a lot of the staff have seen senior leaders who they like and who they trust depart,

I think that there's been a, I mean, the mood is pretty dire. And I think, we talked about this just a moment ago. I mean, people are like, basically feeling like we have to cover this guy, Donald Trump, and his allies for the next three and a half years, you know, minimum. And so how do you have to do, how are you going to, how are you expected to cover the administration fairly, do interesting stories when, you know, you've got this hanging over your head and you know, you have the possibility of course, that Trump could do

it out, do it all again. So I think that there is, I do think that there's obviously a sense of a sense of frustration internally. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were some, some departures at some point. But, but yeah, I think the mood is the mood is fairly bleak. And you know, the other backdrop for this year, too, is that the this merger and the dance around the merger has been going on for like essentially two years, whether you know, share or sell or not. So CBS hasn't made a lot of major moves in the same way that you've seen some of the other networks do you've seen,

you know, NBC and MSNBC because of their spin-off. A lot of things have been changing, and these other places have been trying to adapt to this new, more digital landscape. And CBS has been behind on that because they can't make major moves because they're not necessarily empowered to. And so I think that they're a bit serious.

Yeah, imagine you're 60 minutes and then you want to like go out and find someone to like hire. Not saying that you'd, I mean, they have such talent there, but the talent is aging and they're going to need to like replenish it. It's going to be tough. I mean, it is going to be tough. Not to mention most of, you know, most of the staff who, you know, most of the people who are staffed, the journalists, the talent, a lot of those people are spending their time. They're not necessarily consuming 60 minutes or the evening news or CBS Sunday morning, even though those programs are very popular.

They're watching shows like this YouTube podcast. I just assume everyone watches this. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people do watch, you know, of course. That's why I spend my time doing this. I wouldn't do it otherwise. wouldn't do it just for you. So, um, all right, this is interesting. It's super depressing. I mean, I'm, I'll editorialize a little bit here, but like this stuff really gets me depressed. Like you can't do this. You just can't sell out on that principle. And I know the sale really matters to them and it's billions of dollars and who am I right? But like if you own a media company this is the price you pay for owning a media company. You knew that and when the rubber hits the road you have to

take the principle to stand and that's just a travesty. I mean look I obviously as a journalist I you know it's hard I'm a media reporter I try to look at these things objectively. Of course. I mean, look, you know, to make, to make the argument in favor of Paramount, they really were held up on this idea of they're not going to apologize to Trump, even if the money is, you know, some sort of appeasement, whatever you want to call it. There's no, it's bizarre to say this is, this is separate from, to argue that this is separate from the FCC merger stuff

when you're also saying I'm not apologizing. I'm just giving you $16 million and I'm not apologizing to you. Right, right. It's a bizarre argument to make. But you could say, you know, Paramount didn't want anything saying we officially apologize, we're just, you know, we just want this to go away.

So that you could make that argument. But, you know, what I will say... But it's over the trans... This is the thing, maybe, but it's over something that is a standard practice in television journalism. I mean, what they did with the transcript or with the edit was they cut down a bite and they didn't like put it off and shelve it. They, they put a separate bite of the same answer, right. Arguably a worse one. I think so. The broadcast. And then they put the other one online and it's like, it was there. And this happens all the time.

Trump interviews are edited. All the guy weaves in a million different directions. You think you're getting the full experience when it's right there at it all the time. And so to be like, you know what? We can actually take a hit on this. It's to me just so, it just sets such a bad precedent. I mean, I obviously, like I said, I agree with you as a journalist. You always want an organization to stand behind you.

But you know, look, this is the reason why many people, news consumers, people who are news junkies are turning more towards places like yours. I don't mean that to gas you up, Sam. I would never want to do something like that. I would never want to make you feel good unnecessarily. But I do think that it's actually a fact, it's actually, I think it's actually a fact that, you know, many people are, as their habits are changing, they're also finding places online that I think, you know, align with their values or it opens up opportunities for new outlets to, you know, that have back, you know,

a backbone to kind of demonstrate that in a way that some of these big corporate media organizations, which are, you know, which are more subject to regulation, you know, are showing that they don't or other have other business are showing that they don't. So opportunities for places like the bulwark, not so much. Fine. I'll buy you some. Oh, jeez. I'm yeah, I'm seeking my supper here. Yeah, exactly. All right, Max, take care. I appreciate you coming on. Feel better. Talk

to you soon. For all you who watched this and enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe to the feed and we'll talk to you later.