Donald Trump is doing the next rip-off in a settlement with a big media company he sued for „fake news“. After getting $ 15 million from ABC after a lawsuit against famous anchor George Stephanopoulos, who claimed falsely that Trump was found „liable for rape“, and netting $ 25 million from Meta after his Facebook-accounts were suspended in 2021, Trump is now seeing CBS for incredible $ 10 billion.Trump filed a lawsuit against famous TV-magazine „60 minutes“ and mother-company CBS, accusing the company of falsely editing a „60 minutes“-interview with his opponent Kameela Harris shortly before the election. Trump accuses CBS of intervening and manipulating the election by cutting passages of the Harris-interview which would have shown the candidate in a much lesser favorable light.Even while most of all legal experts dismissed Trumps litigation as far-fetched and the damage claim of $ 10 billion „absurd“, it looks like Trump would win another very high settlement in one of his court battles against media enterprises.CBS-insiders tell US-LIVE that the media giant is „very near an agreement to settle the case before the court hearing“, which was postponed for one week to give the lawyers the chance to find a settlement.The insider: „The question is only how much Trump will cash in. CBS is offering $ 10 million, he is demanding at least $ 100 million. The compromise should be somewhere between $ 10 and $ 50 million if Trump is not playing hardball!“The president has very good cards in this poker game:- CBS and mother Paramount are just in the middle of a merger process which needs the approval of the FCC. After winning the White House the FCC is now run by a Trump-appointee, who urged CBS last week to hand over all the original transcripts of the Harris-interview to the FCC. – Paramount and CBS owner Shari Ralston will net more than $ 2 billion out of the sale of Paramount to Skydance, a company of Larry Ellison and his son. Ellison is one of Trumps new tech backers – Trump wants him also to buy Tik Tok.Shari Redstone and Ellison want an immediate settlement with Trump in the „60 minutes“-case so that they can move on with the merger. If there is no settlement, they fear, the Trump-administration will block the sale of CBS and Shari Redstone’s fortune.The settlement would cause an uproar within CBS News – with dozens of journalists threatening to leave the network – and even in the US media scene as a whole. It would be an extraordinary concession from a media company to a sitting president in a case in which there is no merit that the network reported anything wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation. „CBS would win this case for sure“, many experts say.
„If they pay Trump millions instead this is the end of the First Amendment and would do incredible harm to independent journalism.”
