White House threatens to sue CBS over ‘Evening News’ interview with Trump
CBS News got more than it bargained for when it arranged an interview earlier this week between President Donald Trump and anchor Tony Dokoupil about his early tenure at “CBS Evening News.”
According to This is evident from a report published on Saturday by The New York TimesWhite House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told producers and the host that Trump did not want the exchange edited. “He said, ‘Make sure you don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is published in full,'” Leavitt told Dokoupil and his executive producer, Kim Harvey. “He said, ‘If it doesn’t come out in full, we’re going to sue you.'”
Such behavior is not unexpected when it comes to the Trump administration. Trump won a $16 million settlement from CBS News parent company Paramount after filing a lawsuit over the way a “60 Minutes” interview with former 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was edited. Legal experts believed Trump’s lawsuit had no merit, but Paramount was in trouble – needing approval from US regulators to sell itself to the new owner, now called Paramount Skydance. Trump has also won legal fees from Walt Disney Co. and has gone out of its way to embroil other media outlets in legal skirmishes, including The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. Paramount’s decision led in part to the departure of two top CBS News executives who oversaw “60 Minutes” and other operations.
In a statement Saturday, CBS News said Leavitt’s demands were not a factor in the decision to air Doukopil’s 13-minute interview with Trump at a Ford plant in Michigan in full: “At the time we booked this interview, we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety.”
Yet CBS News has bowed to a similar demand in the past, a move that could be seen as a sacrifice of its journalistic independence. In September, CBS News agreed to stop editing taped interviews with newsmakers appearing on the Sunday public affairs program “Face the Nation” after complaints from the Trump administration about an appearance by U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. She made a number of false or unproven statements during her interview about Kilmar Abergo Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was deported despite having protected legal status in the United States. CBS News offered only part of the entire interview with Noem and made the entire exchange available online.
More to come…
