As we reported on Wednesday, Donald Trump just scored a massive victory over the legacy media, and the fallout is nothing short of spectacular. For years, the left-wing press has operated on the assumption they could smear, distort, and outright fabricate without ever being held accountable — especially when it came to Trump. But CBS News and its parent company, Paramount Global, have agreed to pay an eight-figure settlement to Trump for their deceptive editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
And now the left-wing media establishment is in full meltdown mode.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, for example, was visibly frustrated over the settlement, calling the move a capitulation that plays right into Trump’s hands. He insisted CBS “did nothing wrong” and lamented that Paramount Global “decided to pay Trump to make this lawsuit go away.”
“One CBS correspondent said to me on condition of anonymity, ‘everyone at “60 Minutes” believes this is an act of extortion by the president.’"
But what really set Stelter off was Trump’s response, which framed the settlement as a major win.
"With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said. “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle. President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American People as he continues on his singular mission to Make America Great Again.”
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According to Stelter, “that statement is exactly why CBS News journalists did not want the parent company to settle. That statement is exactly what ‘60 Minutes’ correspondents feared would happen. Trump coming out and claiming victory even though he actually had a very weak case. Legal experts told CNN it was frivolous and ridiculous. They said that CBS could easily win in court if it had chosen to go that route.”
Let’s be clear: this wasn’t just a minor slip-up or a garden-variety editing error. CBS’s “60 Minutes” was caught red-handed, slicing and dicing footage to protect Kamala from her own disastrous performance. Even with the heavy editing, the interview was a trainwreck — so much so that it couldn’t hide her obvious incompetence.
Trump’s legal team argued, convincingly, that CBS’s manipulation misled viewers and was a deliberate attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democrats.
The New York Times didn’t like the settlement, either:
For many veteran correspondents at “60 Minutes,” paying even $1 to settle a left-field lawsuit from an aggrieved president seemed too high a price.
At stake, they believed, was the long-term credibility of the country’s most decorated and most-watched television news program, a journalistic institution since 1968 that prided itself on holding elected leaders to account.
Late Tuesday, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, concluded differently. It agreed to pay $16 million so President Trump would drop a lawsuit that essentially boiled down to a politician’s gripe: that “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with his 2024 opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in a manner that he did not like.
Let’s not forget, this isn’t the first time Trump has forced the media to eat crow. ABC News recently settled with him after George Stephanopoulos repeatedly claimed — falsely — that Trump had been found liable for rape in the E. Jean Carroll civil trial. The jury explicitly said Carroll hadn’t proven her case, even by the low standard required. But that didn’t stop Stephanopoulos from repeating the lie, over and over, until the network had no choice but to settle.
What the legacy media can’t handle is that this settlement wasn’t just a win for Donald Trump; it was a long-overdue reckoning for a media establishment that has spent nearly a decade treating him like fair game for distortion and smear. Trump exposed how corrupt and self-serving these so-called arbiters of truth have become. And judging by the unhinged reaction from figures like Brian Stelter, it’s clear they know it. They’re angry not because Trump’s case was weak, but because it wasn’t. They’re angry because he had the facts, the footage, and the resolve to fight back — and he won.
The media meltdown over Trump’s victory isn’t just about a settlement — it’s about a corrupt establishment finally being called out. PJ Media has never backed down from exposing the rot at the heart of the legacy press. Join our VIP community with promo code FIGHT for 60% off and enjoy member-only articles, ad-free access, and the right to speak your mind in our comments. The time to support real journalism is now. Support fearless conservative journalism that puts America First.