President Trump’s feud with CBS is reaching a fever pitch as his administration turns up the heat on the national broadcast network stemming from a 60 Minutes interview it aired with former Vice President Harris before the presidential election last fall.
Here are five things to know about the Trump, CBS fight.
Trump is convinced CBS intentionally portrayed Harris positively before election
CBS ignited Trump’s fury with an interview it aired in October just weeks before the presidential election with the Democratic nominee.
The network said it invited Trump to sit for a similar interview, but he declined, citing what his campaign said was a long history of hostility by the Sunday evening news magazine program toward Trump and his policies.
After the Harris interview aired, Trump raised issue with an answer the then-vice president gave to a question about the war in Gaza that was not included in the full broadcast and instead published by the outlet online.
The president and his allies contended the network intentionally edited the interview to make Harris seem more coherent and cast her in a positive light, a decision they said amounted to “election interference.”
It is standard practice for news outlets to edit segments for length, clarity and news value though the network did not explain why one version of Harris’s answer on Gaza appeared on air while a fuller version went only online.
The network eventually released a full transcript of the interview after an intense pressure campaign by Trump and his allies.
“The Interview was not doctored; and 60 Minutes did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the question at issue,” a spokesperson for the network said at the time. “60 Minutes fairly presented the Interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it.”
But Trump has made it clear he was not satisfied with that explanation.
Trump sued CBS over Harris interview
Less than a week before Election Day, Trump’s lawyers hit CBS News with a lawsuit over the 60 Minutes episode, seeking $20 billion in damages as part of the litigation filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas.
The soon-to-be president’s attorneys alleged the network engaged in “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion.”
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” the lawsuit read.
Legal observers have pointed to the fact that the suit was filed in a district that has become an attractive forum for Republican-led lawsuits challenging Biden administration actions.
CBS News in a statement said the lawsuit brought by Trump “is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.”
Last month, CBS’s parent company Paramount Global filed a pair of motions asking the Texas judge overseeing the case to dismiss the president’s lawsuit, calling it an “affront to the First Amendment” and that “is without basis in law or fact.”
A ruling on those motions is not expected until the end of May.
CBS broadcast license under threat by Trump’s FCC
Trump ratcheted up his criticism of CBS over the weekend after watching Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes,” which aired a number of segments critical of his administration.
“They are not a ‘News Show,’ but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as ‘News,’ and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website on Sunday evening. “They should lose their license.”
The president went a step further, suggesting FCC Chairman Brendan Carr “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior.”
Carr has repeatedly attacked mainstream news outlets and major tech companies, which he says have worked to undermine the president and conservatives for years.
The FCC chair has also sparked concerns about the federal agency’s independence with investigations he has launched into news networks over their diversity practices and promises to increase scrutiny on public broadcasters over their editorial bend and federal funding.
CBS did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s threat against the network’s broadcast license on Sunday evening.
CBS parent company pushing for mega-merger
Complicating matters for CBS is the major merger its parent company, Hollywood behemoth Paramount Global, is attempting to strike with Skydance Entertainment.
Skydance is a growing movie and media brand led by mogul David Ellison, the son of tech tycoon Larry Ellison — the founder of Oracle and one of the world’s richest people.
Larry Ellison has been at several public White House events with Trump during the first 100 days of his term along with other tech leaders and has spoken glowingly about his administration’s posture toward big business.
Oracle is the cloud computing provider in the U.S. for TikTok, for which Trump is currently trying to find an American buyer.
The Paramount/Skydance merger, which Ellison personally put up more than $7 billion for, will have to clear government regulators before it can cross the finish line, so both current Paramount chair Shari Redstone and Ellison have incentive to stay out of Trump’s crosshairs.
His lawsuit against CBS News aside, Trump similarly knows he can make life difficult for Paramount using the power of the executive branch to put up regulatory blocks to a deal the media company has been working toward for years.
Chatter of a settlement continues to swirl
Rumors of a settlement between Paramount and the president have been circulating in media and political circles for months.
That chatter was driven into overdrive late last year when ABC News, one of CBS’s largest competitors and another frequent media target for the president, agreed to pay $15 million to the Trump Foundation to settle a separate defamation claim.
That case involved ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, who falsely said Trump has been charged with rape, which led to a retraction and apology by the Disney-owned network along with a settlement check.
But many saw ABC’s move to avoid a potentially embarrassing court fight with Trump as a capitulation to his strongarm posture toward broadcast media outlets.
Some say ABC’s settlement could open the door to more lawsuits and threats against media companies from his administration.
The New York Times reported last week lawyers for Trump and Paramount are poised to begin mediation in the coming days and noted rumors of a settlement have roiled some employees at CBS News.
Trump, meanwhile, has made it clear he wishes to see the network punished or publicly humiliated over its coverage of him beyond just the Harris interview last fall.
“CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before,” the president wrote in his Truth Social post. “And they should pay a big price for this.”
