Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump is the man who puts the "frivolous" in "frivolous lawsuits." He's been abusing the legal system for decades, usually to avoid making payment or to escape consequences for his actions, but also sometimes to extract money or concessions from his perceived enemies. The latter approach has become a much bigger part of his toolkit in the last year, as his mafia-like efforts to shake down both people and organizations are no longer just backed by his army of lawyers, but also by the powers of the presidency.
One of the very most frivolous suits Trump filed was the one against 60 Minutes, wherein he asserted that: (1) The program had edited its interview with Kamala Harris to misrepresent what she said and to make her look better; and that (2) He was therefore personally damaged, under defamation law. It would be difficult to come up with a more meritless claim; if we assert here and now that, say, the Green Bay Packers are the greatest football team in the NFL, we cannot be sued by one of the other teams that are therefore NOT the greatest football team in the NFL. That is simply not how defamation law works.
Still, Trump has a virtually unlimited ability to drag out court proceedings, which means that even a successful defense could get very expensive. On top of that, the more he rails against CBS/60 Minutes, the more he turns his loyal followers against that station and that program. That means less viewership and less advertising revenue. Finally, The Donald has no problem abusing the powers of the presidency to hurt those who do not do his bidding. Paramount, which is CBS' parent company, has a pending merger with Skydance that Trump could complicate or kill outright. That could result in losses of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
For all of these reasons, Paramount decided that its only recourse was to settle, thus minimizing its losses and creating some level of cost-certainty. The amount of cash that will change hands is $16 million, though it's expected that Paramount will also kick in another $14 million or so in free advertisements/public service announcements that will promote conservative causes. And, in a further bit of kowtowing, the company also agreed that from here on out, it will release unedited transcripts of all future interviews with presidential candidates. Paramount's press release made much of two "silver linings": (1) that the company was not forced to issue a formal apology to Trump, and (2) that the $16 million is not going to Trump himself, but to his presidential library foundation.
These silver linings are just laughable. If you are forced to eat several barrels' worth of dirt while your opponent looks on and smirks, it does not matter if you pause between fistfuls to say "I'm sorry"—everyone still knows that you ate dirt. Meanwhile, the lines between Trump the private citizen, Trump the business, Trump the library foundation, Trump the PAC, etc. are all but meaningless. Trump can easily find a way to spend that $16 million on something personal, whether it's refurbishing Mar-a-Lago in anticipation of it becoming a "museum," or paying for fuel for the Qatari jet (which, remember, will ALSO belong to the Trump library foundation), or paying every member of the Trump family $1 million a year to serve as directors of the foundation, or whatever. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes' old line about Theodore Roosevelt, Trump has a second-class intellect, but he's a first-class grifter. (Note: The original remark is often said to have been uttered about Franklin Roosevelt, but that doesn't make sense, since Holmes did not know FDR very well, while he knew TR very well, indeed. Plus, it fits TR much more than FDR.)
If Paramount were to give this money and these other benefits to Trump directly, then it would be plainly illegal. But frame it as a settlement of a lawsuit and... it's apparently all kosher. In other words, Trump has found a very effective way to use the powers of the presidency for personal financial gain, and at the same time to force private business concerns to promote his political agenda. The former trick is, as we note above, very mafia-like—basically, Trump's collecting protection money. "That's a nice TV network you've got there. I'd hate to see it become less nice... " The second trick, well, even the mafia didn't go there. That part of it is more in tune with a different organization of Italian origin, namely the Blackshirts.
There's no way to prove this, but we suspect that this whole scheme was cooked up before Harris ever sat for that interview, and that the lawsuit would have been filed regardless of what was said by Harris, or what edits were made. Remember, major-party presidential candidates have been sitting for these interviews for decades. And Trump became the first major-party nominee since the 1970s to buck the trend. This is the same Trump who loves, loves, loves any free publicity that he can get. If he had actually sat for HIS interview, then CBS could point out that both candidates got the same treatment, and both had responses that were edited for broadcast. Only by skipping his sit-down could Trump argue that Harris got special treatment, while leaving CBS/Paramount with no easy way to prove otherwise.
In any case, Paramount has dodged a bullet... for now. One wonders, however, if the company's executives have
considered that, having shown themselves to be pushovers, they are inviting Trump to return in a few months or a year
with yet another frivolous claim, and yet another demand for more protection money a settlement. (Z)