Bribe? Surrender? Both? Unpacking the Trump-Paramount Settlement.

0:01Brian Stelter:When you hear the word Seattle Supersonics, what comes to mind? Maybe it's Sean Kemp, the Rain Man, or Gary Payton, the Glove, or maybe an image of a tall and skinny 19-year-old rookie, Kevin Durant. For fans in Seattle, it's something else. It's tragedy. It's theft. An iconic team with an incredible fan base that packed its bags and shipped off for Oklahoma City. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Jordan Ritter-Kahn. And in my podcast, Sonic Boom, I talk to players, politicians, owners, and fans about how Seattle lost the Sonics. You can listen to it on the Book of Basketball feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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1:31Brian Stelter:A backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905. It is Wednesday, July 2nd. It finally happened. At 9 p.m. LA time, the press release arrived in my inbox. Paramount has reached an agreement in principle to resolve the lawsuit filed by President Trump concerning a 60 Minutes report. That very general language was followed by the details. $16 million Paramount will be paying to Trump's presidential library to settle this$20 billion lawsuit over that Kamala Harris interview, a meritless lawsuit in the eyes of most legal experts.

2:12And CBS News agreed to release a transcript of future interviews with presidential candidates. Okay, but no apology or statement of regret from Paramount as Trump had wanted. That's a big deal, as we've discussed on the show. Still, this payment, I think we can safely call it a bribe or a ransom or whatever gross term you want to use. It is widely seen as greasing the wheels of Trump's FCC, which has held up the approval of Paramount's$8 billion sale to Skydance. As of this taping, that deal has not been approved. And Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, He said that the review is, quote, totally separate, end quote, from this litigation.

2:49OK, but clearly Sherry Redstone and her Paramount board saw value in settling this matter. And the timing was curious right before today's annual shareholder meeting where some new board members were taking over. It's also before another deadline to consummate this transaction, but that will be extended as they figure this out. CBS News staffers are predictably pissed about this. and the Writers Guild put out a statement attacking the capitulation of CBS News and the chilling effect it may have on future journalism there and elsewhere. But George Cheeks, the Paramount co-CEO that oversees CBS News, he defended the deal to shareholders today, saying it, quote, allows the companies to focus on their core objectives rather than being mired in uncertainty and distraction.

3:30That$16 million number is also exactly what Disney paid to settle Trump's ABC news case. We'll discuss why that's important. And Trump's lawyers, for their part, they said the settlement was, quote, another win for the American people. They said they are holding the, quote, fake news media accountable, end quote. Top Democrats are also now calling for a bribery investigation. So there's lots of implications from this settlement. We've got Brian Stelter of CNN here today. He's covered the case pretty extensively as his Reliable Sources newsletter. And he's got some takes that are pretty different from mine.

4:03So today it's the Paramount Trump settlement and what's next in this big giant mess. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.

4:16All right, we are here with Brian Stelter, Chief Media Analyst at CNN, returning champion to the show. Welcome back, Brian. An honor to be here as always. All right, so let's jump right into it. $20 billion was the amount demanded in the lawsuit. The settlement, we are told, is for$16 million. Is this a taco moment for Trump? Trump always chickens out. He got 0.08 of what he asked for.

4:44Brian Stelter:Yes. Shout out to my editor at CNN, Andrew Corral, for doing that math this morning. I said, I need you to figure out this percentage. Look, by the percentage basis, this is a loss for President Trump. But his team is declaring victory, and we all understand why. He's now able to go out with that statement and say, I fought the fake news and I succeeded. I'm doing this on your behalf. And I do think that that quote from the spokesman for his legal team is telling, because for Trump, that's what this was, right? It was a publicity stunt. It was a mission to show that he is fighting the, quote, fake news.

5:20Brian Stelter:And every time he does this, every time he notches a win for his voters, even though it's not a win in the reality-based world, it is something that matters. Well, so$16 million is better than zero. And I think most of us who work in media thought this case was worth exactly zero dollars. Right, because CBS did nothing wrong. And my frustration, and I think the challenge that I've felt, and I know that other media writers have felt in covering this case, is that it's absurd. The lawsuit was absurd. The lawsuit was frivolous. And as many times as we say that, as much as we try to convey that through the news stories, it still gets flattened into something that sounds serious, right?

6:01Brian Stelter:Trump's settlement with CBS. It sounds like something legitimate when this was absurd on its face. Yeah, but you know what? Like, I hear you, and I know the implications for CBS News are not good here, and that's why we hear so much discontent there, and the CBS 60 Minutes correspondents are writing letters, and people are speaking out at meetings, and we had Bill Owens quit, and we had other exits. I understand all of that. But I think it's easy or easier for people like you and me to jump up and down and wave our hands and say, this is not right. This is not right. The fact of the matter is Trump had leverage over CBS.

6:44He knew it. And anytime Trump has some leverage, he will go for it. And this was him going for it. And there were two choices here for the Paramount board and for Sherry Redstone. It was do the best possible version of a settlement that you can or drag this out and possibly lose the$8 billion sale. And when you're in that chair and you're deciding between two pretty bad choices, I understand why you go for the bad but not catastrophic choice.

7:22Brian Stelter:And there is a strong argument that this was the least terrible version of a settlement. Am I getting that right? The least bad outcome from a settlement point of view. Yeah, but from what I've read and what you've done, there's going to be long-term damage to the brand here. I believe there is, and CBS News journalists believe that there will be. And I think there's some outside press freedom groups that want to make sure there is. They want to drag this out, right? Look at the statements from Democratic senators today. Yeah, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. There are a lot of people who are going to try to have long memories when it comes to this case.

7:58Brian Stelter:But insofar as$16 million is the same amount that Disney's ABC paid Trump last December, again, going to that future presidential library, insofar as Paramount did not apologize. It's going to be one freaking nice presidential library. It's going to be gold-plated. And you know that wing is going to be called the fake news wing. I mean, he's going to literally take their money and use it to trash them. With gold toilets everywhere. A hundred percent. But I think that there is an argument here. I think there's a strong argument that Paramount came out of this not paying as much as some people feared, not apologizing to Trump for no reason as many 60 Minutes reporters and producers feared.

8:35Brian Stelter:Some of the worst case outcomes here did not come true so far as we know. Yeah, they basically get to say, we're just as bad as Disney. And they did the same thing. and in exchange, we potentially get this FCC to approve our deal. And when David Ellison comes in, he could do the right thing with CBS News. He could say, that was then, this is now. I will never settle again. We have no idea what David Ellison plans for CBS News. There's been some reports that he wants to bring in Barry Weiss. I don't know what that indicates, but the general feeling, and I've said this from the beginning, is that if you're David Ellison and you're watching this happen, you just want to get this deal done.

9:18You want them to pay off Trump in the least bad way possible so that you can get in there and try to fix it.

9:25Brian Stelter:Let me just acknowledge, though, and without trying to get up on my high and mighty journalism horse here, let's just pay off Trump and get it over with. Even that is just shocking. This is just shocking. Of course. The rest of us are trying to catch up to the reality of Trump's transactional nature. You know, maybe if you covered real estate in New York in the 1980s, you were already up to speed on this. But for everybody else... Or third world despots and demagogues and things like that. Yeah, for everybody else, we're catching up and understanding that Trump 2.0 is very different from Trump 1.0.

9:57Brian Stelter:That this is the price of doing business now if you're a company like Paramount. And this is just how it's going to be for a while. And I think the statements from these advocacy groups and the denunciations from liberal social media commentators, All of it just reflects people catching up and coming to terms with what this is now. Well, that stuff, in my opinion, is noise. But what is not noise is Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, all of these senators who are outright saying, I mean, Ron Wyden said, I'll be the first in line calling for federal charges against Paramount. He also encouraged state prosecutors to go after the Paramount board.

10:34And this is what they have been afraid of during these negotiations. They brought in Gibson Dunn to advise them on potential criminal repercussions from approving this payout. And I think the$16 million number is deliberate because they can now say this is what Disney paid. It's not bribery. If you are going to charge us with bribery, I want you to charge Bob Iger with bribery as well. I don't know whether that will be effective because obviously Bob Iger did not have a pending sale of the company that needed to be reviewed here. How serious do you think these Democrats are? Or is that just noise?

11:12Brian Stelter:I don't think it's noise. I think for all of the liberals who keep saying, where are the Democrats? Why aren't they fighting? Why aren't they standing up in this Trump 2.0 era? Actually, this is an example of the Democrats standing up, right? The statements from senators, the calls for investigations. This is actually what people on the left have been asking Democrats to do. So Warren, for example, saying this could be bribery in plain sight. I'm calling for a full investigation. The reality is she doesn't have the power to do that. when the Democrats are in the minority, but Wieden at least says he's going to have a long memory.

11:41Brian Stelter:And I think some of these other Democrats will as well, because this is a really clean, clear, vivid example of what has changed, again, in Trump 2.0. To the extent that it's noise, though, the Paramount deal will be done. Well, we don't know. That's my next question. I was about to add an asterisk. Yeah. How long do you think the FCC waits to approve this deal? One source of mine said that to avoid the appearance of a quid pro quo here. They will wait 30 days, which we put it at the end of July. And is that enough time? I mean, we all know what's going on. If they approve it today or tomorrow, it's even more obvious.

12:19But Brendan Carr says there's no connection here.

12:23Brian Stelter:What do the kids say when you don't reply to a text? They leave you on read. They leave you on read. What's that expression? I don't know. You're younger than me. You're right. Leaving somebody on read. Yes, that's the phrase. That's what Brendan Carr is doing to me. I texted him first thing this morning. I asked him any new comment, any new update. Nada, nothing. He hasn't said a word to anybody about this so far as I can tell. I do think what you said makes sense about some sort of waiting period. At the same time, what are we coming up against? The July 7th informal merger deadline between Paramount and Skydance?

12:55Brian Stelter:They're going to have to extend it once again. Yeah, they get one more automatic extension there. So really the deadline is October. and obviously every day that this drags on is another day that Paramount is just languishing. They have this South Park situation that they have to deal with where they can't green light another season of the show or they're in a fight over that. They have deals that they're losing, shows they're not making, movies they're not bidding on. All of this stuff is hanging in the balance until the Skydance people can come in here and try to make sense of it. I sure would love to hear Jon Stewart's monologue about this settlement, by the way.

13:34Brian Stelter:I don't know if we will or not. Is he on vacation this week? He probably is. There are people I wish I could hear from, by the way, including the 60 Minutes correspondents, who are also mostly on vacation because the news magazine is on a summer break. And all of this is coming just to make it even more personal, Matt. What is Sherry Redstone dealing with right now? A thyroid cancer diagnosis. She's had it for months. So I hope she hasn't searched her mentions on X today or on Blue Sky. I guess Blue Sky would be the problem. You know, there's so much vitriol directed toward her. There are some understandable reasons why, but there's a very human element here.

14:05Brian Stelter:There are many people that want to get this deal done for many different reasons. Well, that's the other thing that I have always found a little hypocritical here. You see the Writers Guild putting out a statement, you know, abhorring this deal, capitulation, all the big words. And yes, I agree with them. It is bad. But the Writers Guild is not looking at the alternative here. and the possible bankruptcy of this major media company and studio that could fall into, I mean, the Ellison people at least have the money to continue CBS News if they choose to do so with the kind of investment that the Writers Guild would love to see.

14:45And they're at least talking about a path to saving this company as a standalone going concern. And some of the alternatives for Paramount were 100 % not that. It would have been merged out of existence or wound down or stripped for parts. And that's where I think a little bit of the grandstanding on these journalism issues doesn't address the financial reality of this company and what this deal could mean for that company.

15:13Brian Stelter:Right. And the emphasis is on the word could. What we don't know is what kind of owner Ellison would or will be. There are some really positive, rosy scenarios, and there are some much more negative, worrisome scenarios. And from what I'm hearing from CBS News staffers is a lot of anxiety, a lot of worry about that. Wondering what does the future hold? What will he be like? Does he have some sort of side deal with Trump? There's no evidence of that, but that's a question that's been raised today. Sure. There's a Charles Gasparino tweet. He is a New York Post writer, covers business that is known to be favorable to the Trump administration and often breaks news in the conservative media world.

15:53He tweeted today that there is a side deal where the Ellisons have agreed to put PSAs on CBS that will bring the value up to$30 million for this deal. My sourcing on this has suggested that that is not the case. I assume that is the case with your sourcing as well.

16:10Brian Stelter:It is, but I wonder what's going to happen when the FCC review process ends. Meaning, will there be some language tucked into some part of the blessing of the deal that does include PSAs, for example? And for all we know, that's because the idea came out today in a Gasparino tweet. And as a result, it was put into writing. Who knows? Or it came out in the secret shaking of the hands, back-slapping between Trump and Ellison at a UFC fight. We know they were at two separate UFC fights chatting, and that could have been something they talked about. And we also know that this could be explicit. I mean, the FCC has talked about CBS having bias issues and Sherry Redstone herself has talked about CBS having an anti-Israel take in some of these 60 Minutes stories that they've aired.

16:59So perhaps this would be anti-Semitic messages, you know, anti-anti-Semitic messages that air on CBS as part of this deal that could bring the value up. And the FCC would require that, not necessarily the deal that was agreed to today.

17:15Brian Stelter:And just to take this one step further, again, off a speculative cliff here, if it turns out that the settlement on paper was exactly the same as the Disney settlement, but actually there were other provisions, other quiet agreements on the side that wouldn't be provable to anyone trying to investigate a bribery claim, well, this all would make sense, wouldn't it? Yeah, but keep in mind that anything explicit here would be illegal. If Ellison at this point had some agreement to pay Trump extra to settle this, that is illegal. And I got to think the lawyers advising Skydance and all of them would know that and would not overtly do that.

17:56I got to at least give them that amount of credit here.

17:59Brian Stelter:There are very smart lawyers working this case, yes. And I would also take it a step further and say that the bigger concern, if you're working at 60 Minutes, is not about any conversation that Ellison and Trump had months ago at a UFC match. It's about what the new parent company will do three or six or nine or 12 months from now with a tough story about the Trump administration. What decisions will be made about whether to air a piece, whether to hold a piece, whether to kill a piece? because for all of Sherry Redstone's flaws, for all of the anger toward her inside CBS News, she did not kill any of those pieces this year.

18:36Brian Stelter:Those pieces that made her uncomfortable, that made the Trump administration angry, that caused another legal threat, those pieces all still aired. And I think that's just one of the great unknowns going forward about, again, what kind of owner he would be.

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19:34Brian Stelter:Ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can, and get after it. Do you think we'll see any more resignations at CBS News? I have no reason to believe we will, although it is possible at the end of every season, people might decide to move on and do new things. Well, a lot of them are very old anyways. Well, I didn't want to say it like that, but there you go. You can say it. You know, listening to Scott Pelley recently talking with Anderson Cooper on CNN, you could hear Pelley's almost exhaustion with what's been going on at CBS, but also his desire to use what is still the highest rated news program in America to cover the Trump administration.

20:18Brian Stelter:You know, when you were at 60 Minutes, you were in that caper seat. You have a lot of power still. And that's why Trump cares. Trump's not going after Jimmy Kimmel or the LA Times or any of these other outlets. He's going after the one that he knows reaches a ton of people, 20 million people a week, and that can actually have impact on him. Yeah, he cares so deeply. I noticed Armin Kataian, a former 60 Minutes correspondent. He was a contributing correspondent, but he worked at CBS for years. He said on X today, he said, this was a breach of the public trust. Murrow, Cronkite, Hewitt, and thousands of us worked to build.

20:53Brian Stelter:Well, you could take that. That's a very pessimistic view. You could also say, okay, time to rebuild the trust. Time to build it back. And that's why I think some of these 60 Minutes people might stay. I think for someone like Scott Pelley or Leslie Stahl, they're also very curious what's going to happen if they do their job and David Ellison is their boss. And if then he starts going after them and saying, you know what, guys, maybe don't do that tough story about ICE, then they go public. Then they cause an entire shit show. And that's the thing. They will tell us. All the episodes we've seen so far with Trump versus the media, they're not happening in secret.

21:32Brian Stelter:They're happening very visibly, right? Terry Moran at ABC, for example, has been a very visible breakup. And so for all the concern about a chilling effect, a chill in the air, yes, there is a chill in the air. But I would argue to you, Matt, tell me if this is too positive, it's only a temperature change of one or two degrees. The actual climate has not shifted. there is tough, probing coverage of Trump day in, day out. And yes, is it a little more difficult? Are there people that are a little more concerned? Yes. But the temperature change is small, including at CBS. Yeah, I don't know. I think that at the upper echelon of media, yes.