Former NBC sports analyst and CNN contributor Bob Costas blasted ABC News and CBS News for “running the gauntlet that the Trump administration will throw up against them,” during an award speech Monday.
Costas offered his opinion on the two networks’ concessions to President Donald Trump in their squabbles. ABC News paid Trump $15 million to settle a lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos, while CBS News offered Trump $20 million to settle its legal fight.
Recommended Stories
- Ballerina is a brutal, stylish cash grab. It’s worth your money
- DNC launches daily YouTube show as 'go-to spot' for truth amid internal party struggles
- 'The View' melts down over Trump sending National Guard to LA, warns of 'fascism' and 'civil war'
Costas attended the Mirror Awards at Syracuse University to accept the Fred Dressler Leadership Award. Someone in the crowd recorded his speech, which was then shared online.
“Since networks in many cases are owned, they all are corporations, but in some cases, those corporations have specific financial stakes in running the gauntlet that the Trump administration will throw up against them,” Costas said. “His [Federal Communications Commission] intimidated ABC into refuting George Stephanopoulos. All they should have said was, ‘George misspoke. The president — that paragon of virtue — was only found guilty of sexual assault, not rape. So we stand corrected.’ They didn’t have to pay a $15 million ransom.”
Sportscaster Bob Costas ranted at Syracuse University's Mirror Awards yesterday that "There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents. If someone says, and the idea that you have to find, you have to find somebody who will not just fefend Donald Trump, but… pic.twitter.com/FMThVgSYg8
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) June 10, 2025
In addition to the settlement, ABC News issued a statement of regret at the bottom of an online article containing the clip of Stephanopoulos’s comment. Trump took the settlement toward establishing a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.”
This week, ABC News opted not to renew its contract with Terry Moran after his online rant against White House Deputy Chief of Policy Stephen Miller.
“It does not mean that we are without fault. It does not mean that the legacy or mainstream media doesn’t screw up from time to time or have blind spots or misplaced narratives,” Costas said. “But if the answer to that is [Make America Great Again] media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump’s view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals, there are no principles at work other than what benefits him, I’ll stay with where we are without correction.”
CBS News next fell into Costas’s crosshairs for their “$20 million in ransom to Trump,” which he joked “is just the cost of doing business when there’s billions of dollars at stake.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH STANDS BY ‘BEST BIDEN EVER’ COMMENT: ‘I NEVER SAW THOSE DAYS’
Trump’s grievances came after CBS News’s 60 Minutes hosted former Vice President Kamala Harris for an interview a month before the election. At the time, Trump claimed the edits made to Harris’s interview were “the biggest scandal in broadcast history: they actually took her answer out and gave her a different answer after it was shot.” The network said the interview was edited for time purposes but not doctored.
Costas has long criticized Trump, calling him “by far the most disgraceful figure in modern presidential history.” Trump has not yet responded to Costas’s most recent remarks.