On this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” host Jon Stewart was joined by journalist Steve Kroft to discuss Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Donald Trump, a deal the former “60 Minutes” correspondent called “tribute to the king.”
Stewart opened the interview by asking Kroft what it meant for a news organization like “60 Minutes” to pay such a large settlement to the president, offering the word “devastating” as a descriptor for internal attitudes. Kroft agreed that “devastating” was a “good word” for the situation.
“I think there’s a lot of fear,” Kroft said. “Fear of losing their job, fear of what’s happening to the country, fear of losing the First Amendment. All of those things.”
When asked why he thinks Paramount paid the settlement, Kroft cleverly dodged the question, stating that “a couple of congressmen think that it was bribery.” He later let his own thoughts be known, calling the deal “a shakedown.”
“That’s what I call it,” he added. “Some people call it extortion.”
He later said that many in the journalism community feel similarly about Paramount’s decision to pay up.
“It’s not just me or ’60 Minutes’ or you that think it’s a shakedown,” Kroft said. “It’s pretty much every reporter that’s looked at this case and said, ‘This is ridiculous. It’s going to be thrown out of any court that it goes before.’ Except maybe one in Amarillo, [Texas], and that’s where they brought the suit.”
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When asked how the media should respond to such a historic development, Kroft took the opportunity to say that Trump didn’t get everything he wanted from the Paramount camp.
“This lawsuit, the one thing that they didn’t get, Trump didn’t get, he didn’t get an apology, and he had been pushing really hard,” he said. “He was demanding an apology and wanted CBS to admit that it had made a mistake, so he could use that against [them] and erode the credibility of the program and the network. But he did not get it, and that’s important.”
Trump filed a lawsuit against Paramount and CBS days before the 2024 presidential election. In it, he alleged that a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s former presidential opponent, violated a Texas consumer-protection law and misled voters. He originally asked for $10 billion in damages but then upped it to $20 billion in an amendment. Trump thought the edited interview made Harris look “more presidential” and claimed that it was “the biggest Broadcasting SCANDAL in History!!!”
All against the backdrop of Paramount’s $8 billion deal with Skydance, which awaits approval from the Trump-controlled FCC, the studio agreed to pay the president $16 million rather than fight on against a lawsuit they had previously slammed as “meritless.”
Watch Stewart’s entire interview with Kroft below.
From Variety US