It’s hard to forget the infamous Kamala Harris “60 Minutes” interview in October of last year. It was such a disaster that the right mocked it endlessly. But what made it truly sad was how CBS News deceptively edited her responses to try to make her sound more coherent.
Donald Trump demanded that CBS release the unedited footage, even warning it to do it “the nice way or the hard way.” CBS stonewalled and refused to give a real explanation. That defiance set the stage for a massive federal lawsuit, which Trump’s team first pegged at $10 billion in damages before later doubling it to $20 billion.
The settlement with Trump stirred controversy, and many on the left accused the network of caving to him. But once you look at the timing and the behind-the-scenes concerns, it becomes clear that CBS didn’t settle just because of one interview. A new report from the New York Times revealed that CBS feared what else might spill out once Trump’s lawyers gained access to discovery.
“On July 7, 2024, Paramount announced it would sell itself to Skydance Media,” explains the New York Times. “Skydance would pay $8 billion for the company, about a third of the company’s value when she took over. As part of the deal, Skydance would pay $2.4 billion for the Redstone family’s controlling stake, and give Ms. Redstone additional payments amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.”
One problem is that once Trump won the election, Paramount understood that the new Trump administration would control FCC approval, which Paramount needed in order to sell. Everyone knew a high-profile lawsuit against the president threatened that deal. Naturally, Shari Redstone wanted to shut down the matter quickly. But inside CBS, ideological hardliners fought her, refusing to hand Trump any kind of victory.
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Then an even bigger problem surfaced. Executives began worrying less about Kamala and more about Joe Biden. In October 2023, CBS also conducted a “60 Minutes” interview with Biden. Off camera, staffers reportedly admitted that Biden appeared sluggish, needed nudging to answer, and looked slower than what the White House wanted the public to see. Those admissions carried serious consequences. If Trump’s legal team gained access to raw footage and internal communications, they’d have even more problems on their hands.
By July 2025, the risk became too great. Paramount cut a deal: The company directed $16 million toward Trump’s presidential library and legal expenses, and CBS agreed to release transcripts of future presidential candidate interviews. That last concession is almost laughable. Why should anyone have to force the press into basic transparency? Yet here we are, watching news outlets fight sunlight until someone drags them into court.
It was absolutely in Paramount’s best interests to settle. Remember, since Biden dropped out, the mainstream media has scrambled to save face and distance itself from the cover-up of his mental decline. By cutting the settlement, CBS avoided an embarrassing discovery process that could have exposed it as a central player in that deception.
In the end, the Kamala interview only lit the spark. The real fire CBS feared came from Biden’s cognitive condition and its own role in hiding it from the public. That fear explains why it rushed to settle, and it’s also why Americans no longer trust the media when they claim to deliver “the facts.” Whether protecting their corporate bottom line, shielding Biden, or covering their own tracks, outlets like CBS have proven that transparency always takes a backseat to politics.
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