Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Michael Sozan: Good to be on with you, Greg. Thanks.
Sozan: That case was the flimsiest of cases from the very beginning when Donald Trump brought it. You might remember he sued for $20 billion with a “B,” which was just insane from the beginning. And all the legal experts had said, Look, of course, news entities have the First Amendment right to edit interviews the way that they want to. And so from the beginning, that suit should have been laughed out of court. And actually, Paramount itself—its lawyers continued to argue in court documents that this was an absurd case that wasn’t founded in the law at all. And Trump kept on it day after day, demanding that there be some settlement. And the parties did enter into settlement negotiations. It was reported that Paramount’s board was really actually worried and was discussing whether a settlement could amount to bribery. So they knew that it was a risk. Their shareholders and others—First Amendment people—were arguing, telling them, Please do not settle. They ultimately did anyway, just a few weeks ago, for at least $16 million.
Sozan: Exactly right. And this is why some people were raising this issue of potential bribery. So there was, on the one hand, this lawsuit that Trump had brought that we just discussed. Simultaneously, unfortunately for Paramount-CBS, they are trying to get a merger approved by the Federal Communications Commission. That’s the agency that oversees telecommunications, media entities and their licenses. And the FCC is now run by a very close ally of Donald Trump named Brendan Carr. Brendan Carr had slowed down the merger proceedings and had accused CBS perhaps of engaging in news distortion from when it edited the 60 Minutes interview. So things were ground to a halt over at the FCC. And Carr was trying to say that the Trump lawsuit was not related, but most people thought obviously it was. The heads of Paramount really wanted to get this merger done, and they clearly saw—at least it appears to most of us—that settling the unrelated lawsuit with Trump would be a way to unlock the merger and finally get it approved by the FCC.
Sozan: Greg, I think that this raises a lot of troubling questions. This is a really bad look for CBS, and it sure looks like their decision to cancel Colbert’s show could be the result of more political pressure and censorship from Trump and his team. The reporters, others who work over at CBS, producers have been troubled by Paramount’s capitulation to Trump for a while now. And you might remember that the executive producer of 60 Minutes, the most respected news program out there, resigned a few months ago because he said that the heads of CBS and Paramount were pressuring him to change the way that 60 Minutes reports about Trump. Also shortly after that, the president of CBS News herself resigned under similar circumstances.
Sargent: Yeah, it’s really hard to see it as purely a financial decision. Into all this, Trump steps in and unleashes this vile attack on Colbert. I’m going to read it, “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.” Michael, Trump doesn’t even pretend he’s making an actual judgment on Colbert. Colbert has criticized him, therefore he has no talent. The best TV host is the Fox guy who unfailingly praises him with North Korea–like obsequiousness. The shamelessness of it is almost impossible to even express in words. Your thought on it?
Sargent: So Michael, I think what you’re getting at is an important point that’s often overlooked in discussions of all this. Trump wants it to be understood that his pressure on the media is having an effect. He wants the direct link to be drawn. He wants that because he wants other media organizations and other would-be critics to fear pressure from him along these lines. He’s very explicit about it all in a way that, as you say, Brendan Carr probably wouldn’t want to be, but he isn’t just accidentally blurring this stuff out. The open and shameless nature of what Trump is doing is the thing. It’s deliberate. He wants these links to be drawn explicitly because he wants others in a position to criticize him or report aggressively on him to fear similar outcomes. Your thoughts on that?
And really, Greg, he’s been on a roll over the past several months when he’s been assailing the media companies. He got a big settlement out of ABC. He now has the Paramount-CBS settlement. He just led a successful fight to defund NPR and PBS. We can go on and on. He banned Associated Press from the White House briefing room. He’s now threatening to sue The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, which really, as we know, Murdoch has been an ally. And we can even bring in further examples that have been going on for several months. So I think he feels he’s on a roll here, and there’s no reason for him to try to be quiet about it.
Sozan: Remember when Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orbán visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago? And they’ve had multiple meetings. Within the past couple of years, the conservative CPAC had one of its big events over in Hungary. They are shameless about the fact that they admire some of these authoritarian plays from around the world. And Orbán is a perfect example of somebody who has neutered the press in his own country and really been able to shape a narrative that’s allowed him to stay in power for many, many years. I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue—if Trump and Orban and other authoritarian-minded leaders trade tips behind the scenes. I’m sure their staffers are talking all the time. So that is one of the dynamics here, I would think.
Sozan: It’s not crazy. I’m glad every day that there are fearless journalists like yourself who are out there doing great, important work to shine the light on government corruption and all the other unconstitutional things that are happening. I’m probably just a little less optimistic than you are right now. That’s only because we’ve seen capitulation from some of the most hallowed brands, some of the most hallowed media companies around, whether it’s ABC or CBS with 60 Minutes. I think that those capitulations send a signal to others.
Sargent: No question about it. I just think that there’s a danger in doing his work for him and inflating his power. By all means, it’s absolutely a very disturbing pattern. The big picture, though, seems to me to be somewhat nuanced. All that terrible stuff’s happening, but the reporting is very aggressive. And his approval rating is going down, down, down, right? We’re seeing the polls getting worse and worse for him, including on his core issue. By the way, I should point out that there’s been incredibly aggressive reporting on Trump’s authoritarian immigration crackdowns. And I suspect that that’s going to get worse for Trump, too, now that he’s got all this money for ICE to turn it into his own personal gestapo or whatever. The reporting is going to get incredibly aggressive on that and tell some really intense stories. And Trump can tweet all he wants. He’s not going to be able to hold that back. Am I again being too optimistic?
Sargent: What’s funny about all this is that what we’re seeing out there is that standing up to Trump actually works better than capitulating to him. That’s been the story on one front after another. The law firms that capitulate to Trump are getting hammered in the press and their public images are taking a huge hit. The law firms that stand up to him actually are being treated as heroes and [are] winning their cases in court. I don’t understand why these media companies are capitulating in these lawsuits. It’s just inexplicable to me. It seems like they just don’t really think their brand’s going to take a hit. But if they were to stand up to Trump, I would think their brand would flourish. Am I wrong? The story of this moment is that he can be resisted, not that you have to capitulate to him.
And this is why, coming back to the topic that we started with, Stephen Colbert, I think Trump wanted another pound of flesh from Paramount-CBS even after the settlement. The merger is still pending. I think that he somehow.… And again, I don’t know this. I’m not behind the scenes. But because he dislikes Colbert so much and Colbert has continued to talk about Trump day in and day out in not flattering ways, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump sent a signal that he needed Colbert’s scalp. And again, now Colbert is canceled. So this just weaves into the larger point that you’re making, which is it doesn’t pay to capitulate to Trump. He’s just going to come back for more. And if we in civil society, if our institutions, if our everyday Americans hang together in this moment, we can minimize Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and hopefully come out of this chapter ultimately stronger.
Sozan: Thanks, Greg.
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