It was expected that CBS/Paramount would cave in and give Donald Trump the money he demanded. Like any mob boss he had leverage. In this case, Paramount didn’t want its Skydance deal to suffer, so whether it’s a corporate merger or getting cash payouts from the storefront owners who have a nice little business and think it would be a shame if anything happened to it, the mob mentality is clear.
CBS decided to pony up $16 million, which is the same amount that ABC/Disney decided to part with, and for basically the same rationale: it’s less of a hassle to pay Trump off than to simply take him to the mat and win. And both companies would have won, and handily so, if we are to believe legal experts — but they would have had to stand their ground and the mentality is that it’s better to cave.
This does not bode well for the First Amendment or for democracy as a whole. However, the Paramount settlement has a few good things going for it. There is a silver lining.
Paramount said late Tuesday that it has agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of an interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” an extraordinary concession to a sitting president by a major media organization.
Paramount said its payment includes Mr. Trump’s legal fees and costs and that the money, minus the legal fees, will be paid to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library.
As part of the settlement, Paramount said that it had agreed to release written transcripts of future “60 Minutes” interviews with presidential candidates. The company said that the settlement did not include an apology.
There are two small wins here and hey, in this political climate, you take your wins where you find them. One, is there will be no public apology. This is a settlement to make the mob boss happy and keep him from interfering with a major business deal. Nobody is sugar coating that with pretend remorse. That’s something.
But there’s the part I really love: the money is to go to Trump’s future presidential library. What future presidential library? Oh, I suppose one may exist in theory, but as you well recall from Trump 1.0 when that topic came up, the suggestions then were that Trump would have coloring books in his library.
The standoff here is interesting: CBS isn’t paying cash to Trump, they’re going to donate it to something that may or may not ever exist. If Trump does what other presidents have and creates a library, fine. If he does not, then he won’t get the money.
Which is ultimately fine, too. The purpose of the suit is harassment and of course all the right-wing organs are singing the tune about how King Donald showed the fake news media, bla bla. But at least CBS has wrapped it up all nice and put a bow on it so it looks like something *presidential* has transacted.
How about CBS releasing all of its UNEDITED transcripts of interviews and recorded comments made by Trump? How much “sanewashing” has the network done to cover up Trump’s idiocy?
And we wonder why we are where we are…there is NO WIN caving to a moronic fascist liar…those small details will be lost to the sheeple, previously, and, unfortunately, called citizens of the greatest country on earth. LIE. If the leaders of the world had stood up to Hitler early on…70 MILLION people wouldn’t have died, including 400,000 of OUR BOYS. How did we honor them? By allowing a nazi pissant trust fund moron to steal the presidency TWICE!!! The same office held by Washington, Lincoln, FDR, etc. I’m not only ashamed of us…I’ve developed a hitherto unknown hatred for the entitled white people that rule, and have ruled my homeland from the jump. Of course, anyone who reads can find out we were never angels…we lied about that too.
Ask the 110,000 japanese american citizens locked up in concentration camps during WW2. Ask the natives in Alaska, who’s village was razed and burnt because we didn’t want the japanese to use their resources. 900 people lost their way of life. One of these days we may start telling the truth…or we’ll pay the dictator 16 million for doing so. I wonder how many poor kids could eat today if we spent that on food? AMERICA…GO PHUCK YOURSELF YOU EVIL MONEY WORSHIPPING CHILD KILLER. ROT IN HELL. ITS COMING!!!! I have no country. I guess that means I can be deported anywhere that freedom is dead. Thanks assholes.