President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would want ‘a lot’ of money from CBS News if he wins his $10 billion lawsuit against the network for its edited ’60 Minutes’ interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president has repeatedly claimed that the network purposely edited Harris’ interview in October in a way that put him at a disadvantage in the presidential election.
‘So we sued and we are in discussions of a settlement,’ Trump said at his first Cabinet meeting.
When a reporter then asked how much money he would find acceptable, the president simply said, ‘I think it’s a lot.
‘It probably did effect the election,’ he claimed. ‘I mean we won by a lot, as I said, “too big to rig,” you know, [I] probably could’ve won by more.
‘But I could’ve lost the election because of it.’
Attorneys representing Trump in the lawsuit have argued that CBS News cut down the vice president’s ‘word salad’ answer to a question about the Israel-Hamas conflict to help the Democratic nominee secure the White House.
In an amended lawsuit filed earlier this month, Trump’s lawyers cited one exchange where Harris gave a lengthy, rambling answer about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which CBS only aired about seven seconds of.
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would want ‘a lot’ of money from CBS News if he wins his $10 billion lawsuit against the network
Attorneys representing Trump in the lawsuit have argued that CBS News cut down the vice president’s ‘word salad’ answer to a question about the Israel-Hamas conflict to help the Democratic nominee secure the White House
‘(CBS News) manipulated not only Harris’s Reply about Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the Interview in its entirety,’ the lawsuit reads.
The amended suit also added CBS’s parent company Paramount Global as a defendant following the release of the unedited version of the interview, saying the doctored version appeared on its Paramount+ streaming platform.
At the same time, Trump’s lawyers have also filed a Freedom of Information request to the FCC, to obtain all records of its handling of his CBS lawsuit, including from Biden-era FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.
The unedited version of the 60 Minutes interview was ordered by Rosenworcel’s replacement in the Trump administration, Brendan Carr, as part of a complaint over ‘news distortion’ that the FCC is now investigating.
It found that CBS News aired just 20 minutes of their hour-long interview.
In the exchange about Netanyahu, Harris was asked by ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Bill Whitaker why it ‘seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.’
‘Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,’ she replied.
‘And we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’
The unedited version of the 60 Minutes interview was ordered by Trump administration FCC Chair Brendan Carr (pictured), as part of a complaint over ‘news distortion’ that the FCC is now investigating
But in the version that made it to air, Harris gave a much more succinct answer, saying: ‘We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’
Following the release of the unedited interview, Carr spoke out to say the conduct of CBS News’ editors was ‘hard to explain.’
Trump issued a far more hostile response after the footage was released, saying CBS News should be shut down and its flagship 60 Minutes show be ‘terminated.’
‘CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before,’ Trump claimed in a post to Truth Social.
‘They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview,’ he continued.
‘This was Election changing ‘stuff,’ Election Interference and, quite simply, Election Fraud at a level never seen before.’
CBS News staffers are said to be dreading a proposed settlement with Trump
Meanwhile, staff at the embattled network are said to be dreading a proposed settlement.
The employees are almost universally against settling the lawsuit, and would be especially irate if any proposed settlement comes with a mandated apology from the network, which has previously maintained that the clip with Harris was ‘not doctored.’
But executives at Paramount reportedly believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration would approve its multibillion-dollar merger with entertainment company Skydance, according to the New York Times.
Carr has even suggested that conservative complaints of bias at CBS News could factor into the agency’s review of the merger after he reopened the case – which was initially dismissed just four days before Trump’s second inauguration.
Still, network executives have defended its editing decisions, claiming they cut down Harris’ answer to fit their one-hour broadcast.