The White House / Flickr (Left), 4kclips / Shutterstock.com (Right)
Paramount Global, CBS’s parent company, has agreed to pay at least $16 million to President Donald Trump and adopt a new editorial policy as part of a legal settlement, following allegations that CBS manipulated a 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed last October, accused CBS of deliberately editing Harris’ response to a foreign policy question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 2024 election season. The full, unedited exchange was withheld by the network until the Federal Communications Commission intervened.
When the footage was finally made public, it showed CBS had split Harris’ remarks — airing part in an early excerpt on “Face the Nation” and the rest in a full “60 Minutes” broadcast — effectively omitting the full context of her answer.
Under the terms of the settlement, Trump will receive $16 million to cover legal expenses, with additional funds reportedly allocated to his future presidential library.
According to FOX News, “there is an anticipation that there will be another allocation” for advertisements and public service announcements aligned with conservative causes, which could significantly increase CBS’s payout. Paramount has disputed the existence of any such additional allocation.
CBS also agreed to implement what insiders are calling the “Trump Rule,” a new policy mandating the release of full, unedited transcripts of future interviews with presidential candidates.
The network issued no apology.
CBS News President Wendy McMahon, who reportedly opposed the settlement, abruptly resigned in May due to internal disagreements, CatholicVote reported. Several Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had urged Paramount not to settle in May, calling the lawsuit “an attack on the First Amendment.”
However, Trump remained confident throughout, calling the case a “winner” in an April Truth Social Post.
“They cheated and defrauded the American People at levels never seen before in the Political Arena,” he wrote. “Kamala Harris, during Early Voting and, immediately before Election Day, was asked a question, and gave an answer, that was so bad and incompetent that it would have cost her many of the Votes that she ended up getting.”
