CNN anchor Jake Tapper didn’t mince words when dissecting the “dangerous” clash between Paramount, CBS News, and President Donald Trump in a dispute he argued “any American who values a free and independent press” should care about – even MAGA supporters.
The controversy ignited after a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris aired last fall. Trump, who declined to participate, slammed the network for how it edited Harris’ responses. Specifically, he took issue with discrepancies between Harris’s answer aired on CBS’s Face the Nation and 60 Minutes, focusing on a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While CBS claims the differing clips were simply from “two different parts from the same longer answer,” evidenced in a transcript that was turned over to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week, which was subsequently made public.
Trump accused CBS of editing Harris’s answer in what he branded “the greatest fraud in broadcast history.” He even demanded that “CBS should lose its license” and sued the network for $10 billion under “news distortion rules.”
“The suit is widely regarded by legal and first amendment experts, as well as one put it, quote, a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media,” Tapper said.
Continuing to defend that stance, Tapper explained how conservative-leaning network Fox News had made similar edits to a Trump interview in June 2024, including one about declassifying the Jeffrey Epstein files, editing down a meandering answer to the then-candidate’s eventual decisive “yes.”
“Fox had every right to make that edit,” Tapper said, defending the rival network.
He added: “Now, did that edit make Trump look more decisive, less equivocating? Equivocating? Did it make Trump, therefore, look better? Yep. Was that why Fox did it? I have no idea. Maybe they just had some timing issues. Either way, it’s Fox’s right to do it just as it was Fox’s right to do it when they had Trump’s surprise visit to a Bronx barber shop on air, which they also cut down significantly. And, coincidentally or not, flatteringly Fox had the right to do it – and not just because cable and broadcast networks have different rules.”
The stakes, however, are higher than a single lawsuit, he continued.
“Now, the 60 Minutes editing case would almost certainly fail spectacularly in court, according to legal experts,” the anchor said. “But Paramount Global, which owns CBS News, is currently trying to merge with Skydance Media. And in order to do that, Paramount will need the approval of the Trump administration, specifically, the FCC, which under its new commissioner, Brendan Carr, has suggested that Trump’s news distortion complaint will be considered by the FCC before any merger can be approved.”
With Trump ally Carr now leading the FCC, Tapper explained that insiders told him that “everyone expects” Paramount Global chair Shari Redstone” will settle with Trump, prioritizing the $8 billion deal and payday. Moreso, they pointed out that Skydance, if they are truly interested in the brand value of CBS, should flag Redstone to hold on to the sale until the case is settled.
“Let’s call it what it is. It’s a bribe,” one CBS employee told Tapper.
Tapper paraphrased that to “settle the suit would be a white flag of surrender… the network of [veteran broadcaster] Edward R. Murrow… saying, we will not speak truth to power. We will acquiesce to power at the expense of truth.”
The anchor continued to point out that Trump “has almost always lost” lawsuits waged against the media but that “the point is [not] actually to win” but to “make people think twice before they will say anything critical about him.”
These latest lawsuits, Tapper warned, are “dangerous escalation.”
“You live long enough and you see how eroded standards that politicians think work for their side always end up being wielded against them,” Tapper concluded. “And at that point, it doesn’t even matter who started it. It just matters that corporations are leaning on news divisions to supplicate themselves to whomever is in power because of their bottom line and the implied threat from the government.”
Invoking Murrow, the anchor continued: “‘This instrument can teach. It can illuminate. Yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box.’”
If Redstone settles, Tapper quipped, “She may as well take the wires and lights and the box and sell them for parts.”
Watch above via CNN.
