When Donald Trump announced his $20 billion lawsuit against Paramount over the “60 Minutes” interview that had been heavily edited, I thought the case would be dismissed like his other cases had been before.
The court allowed the case to move forward. Now, millions are being put on the table by Paramount. Nevertheless, Trump is asking for a little something more.
The suit by Trump against Paramount was about more than just deceptive editing and election interference, as Trump’s attorneys added that then-presidential candidate had also suffered mental anguish over the interview.
Paramount recently tried to have the case tossed out of court, with Trump’s attorneys arguing, “[T]he First Amendment is no shield to news distortion.”
The filing continued that the interview “led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers, including Plaintiffs, regarding a household name of the legacy media apparently deceptively distorting its broadcasts, and then resisting attempts to clear the public record.”
This was a rather interesting approach, and that is perhaps why, thus far, the suit has been permitted to continue.
On Thursday, reports surfaced that Paramount had offered a $15 million settlement to Trump, but Trump had declined the offer to end the $20 billion lawsuit.
The reports continued that Trump was seeking more than $25 million, with other reports stating that the majority stakeholder in Paramount was willing to pay $50 million to settle the suit, but had been staying out of negotiations to this point.
It went on to say that as part of the deal, Trump wanted the company to issue a formal and public apology to him for having deceptively edited the content.
Then, on Friday, more reports broke that a new settlement had been proposed, with Paramount mulling it over.
A new settlement was reportedly offered that would give Trump about $20 million in cash as well as having the network run a series of public service ads on issues for which the administration was passionate about.
Some of the topics mentioned were antisemitism and causes to support our veterans.
Thus far, the Trump camp and Paramount have been quiet on the proposal, so there is no inkling if either side is leaning into the deal or not.
Making things even more complicated is the fact that Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is trying to sell the company to Skydance for $8 billion, with many seeing this suit by Trump as an obstacle before that sale would be approved by the administration. In other words, they are more or less saying that Trump’s lawsuit over the “60 Minutes” interview is nothing more than a shakedown by Trump to let that deal go through.
