In an amended complaint filed in February, Trump bumped his claim for damages to $20 billion.
The sticking point isn't the money, the Wall Street Journal reports. Trump wants an apology from the network and an admission of fault, but Paramount (CBS' corporate parent) refuses.Instead they're offering to run... public services messages about antisemitism? What?
What has that got to do with any of this?
Ed Morrissey comments:
They don't want to admit error, the WSJ later notes, because they don't want to expose their news operations to further legal liability for cooked reporting and corrupt election meddling. They want the lawsuit out of the way for their merger with Skydance, likely because of the potential liability of a $20 billion claim on the balance sheet as the value of Paramount gets calculated. Other media outlets also claim that Paramount and Redstone are worried that the FTC would intervene in the merger in retaliation, but that has never made a lot of sense. (The WSJ lays out that case near the end of that report, for those who want to read it.) There isn't really much of a reason for an FTC intervention in this merger, as it's not even among the more impactful consolidations in the entertainment industry of late. A federal court would make short shrift of such a move, especially these days, and maybe especially in the DC circuit.
CBS "News" and 60 Minutes are shrieking about the possibility of any admission, even an implicit one, that they ever did anything wrong or biased, ever.
Even as lawyers for Paramount Global and President Trump are in discussions about a potential settlement in his lawsuit over the editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris, Paramount and CBS filed a response reaffirming their position that the interview is protected by the First Amendment -- and that Trump's legal team has failed to provide any evidence to the contrary.
"This is a meritless lawsuit that, as Plaintiffs' opposition admits, takes 'aim[] at a news organization' ... for editorial decisions Plaintiffs dislike," Paramount and CBS said in a filing Monday in reply to Trump's motion to deny CBS's request to dismiss the lawsuit.
...
"President Trump and Representative Jackson attempt to evade bedrock First Amendment principles establishing that public officials like themselves cannot hold news organizations like CBS liable for the exercise of editorial judgment," CBS said in its June 23 reply.
As you know, 60 Minutes ultraliberal partisan Scott Pelley whined like a bitch over the alleged Death of Democracy should Paramount settle with Trump.
Joe Rogan asked Bernie Sanders about this. Sanders kept asserting that politicians shouldn't sue leftwing legacy media companies, ever, no matter how much they defame or spread disinformation. Rogan proposed, correctly, that if they never pay a price, they'll continue doing it forever, and Sanders just continued his Angry Old Man ranting.
By the way, Sanders didn't know the answers to barely any of Rogan's questions. And he claims that he's very "well prepared" to answer Rogan's questions.
Can we get a Cognitive Health Check on Bernie Sanders?