On Tuesday, Paramount Global, the owner of the television network CBS, settled a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump last year, days before the election that returned him to the presidency. For those who have forgotten: On November 1, 2024, he filed suit in the Trump-friendly Northern District of Texas, demanding an astronomical ten billion dollars from CBS News’s 60 Minutes.
CBS’s offense? Editing a recent 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris before broadcast — something that 60 Minutes has done, along with all other news organizations, including Fox, as standard practice since it came into existence. Trump’s lawsuit claimed that by editing out Harris’s fumbling non-responses, 60 Minutes had harmed America’s ability to see her incompetence, thus . . . harming him too? Harming his campaign’s ability to win? Harming America? This last is actually what his lawyers went with: The official language in their complaint argued that 60 Minutes’ editing was meant to “confuse, deceive, and mislead the public.” But none of this matters, of course.
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