Trump has been after Paramount ever since it was made clear that 60 Minutes had heavily edited its interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign cycle.
Paramount recently offered Donald Trump $15 million to settle the lawsuit he brought over the issue, but the president has turned it down.
Trump has always believed the Harris interview was a form of election interference, and it is hard to argue against him on this one.
We all know that interviews on 60 Minutes are edited for time constraints, but the show made Harris look and sound intelligent when the raw footage offered a completely different perception.
So, Trump filed suit, stating, “The case we have against 60 Minutes, CBS, and Paramount is a true WINNER.
“They cheated and defrauded the American People at levels never seen before in the Political Arena," he wrote.
Trump wants to really hurt Paramount to set an example that this type of media is simply unacceptable. Paramount is hoping to end this before it gets to court, and reports broke this week that a settlement was put on the table.
Early reports stated that Paramount offered the president $15 million to settle the case right now.
Trump’s original suit was for $10 billion, which is just a bit unrealistic, but the early settlement numbers were nothing close to what Trump is thinking, so the early speculation was that he would likely reject the offer.
Paramount has been in complete and utter turmoil after Trump hit the company with the suit, to the point that the longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes, Bill Owens, stepped down in April, and host Scott Pelley had an anti-Trump on-air meltdown as well as another during a recent commencement speech.
Just as we suspected, when the offer was made, Trump did not think it was anywhere near his ballpark, and he reportedly rejected the offer, while also demanding an apology from Paramount.
Reports surfaced that Trump was hoping to hit somewhere around $25 million, so Paramount is way off the target right now.
As we mentioned above, Pelley has been going off on Trump, telling Wake Forest graduates, “Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends. There's nothing new in this.”
I am sure his recent rants have contributed to Trump’s attitude on this settlement, and I am sure the more Pelley spews his anti-Trump rhetoric, the higher the settlement number will go.
