CBS Evening News Threatened with Lawsuit Over Trump Interview: Report
· BCPosted in: CBS, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: cbs evening news, trump
CBS Evening News Threatened with Lawsuit Over Trump Interview: Report
Reports are that The White House threatened CBS/Paramount Skydance with a lawsuit if Donald Trump's CBS Evening News interview was edited.
Published Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:52:08 -0600
by Ray Flook
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Even after agreeing to pay him a $16 million settlement to make his lawsuit against CBS News' 60 Minutes go away (despite many believing the company had a strong case to challenge it in court), David Ellison's Paramount Skydance wasn't cut any slack by Donald Trump and his folks when it came to his recent one-on-one interview with CBS News' Bari Weiss' and anchor Tony Dokoupil's CBS Evening News. The New York Times reports that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the show's producers and Dokoupil that Trump wasn't looking for the interview to be edited. "He said, 'Make sure you don't cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full.' He said, 'If it's not out in full, we'll sue your ass off,'" Leavitt reportedly expressed to Dokoupil and his executive producer, Kim Harvey. "The moment we booked this interview, we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety," CBS News said in a statement issued on Saturday.
CBS Evening News: Tony Dokoupil's Sign-Off a FOX "News" Red Flag?
With the evening news broadcast trailing in ratings by 23% compared to this time last year, Dokoupil was presented with another opportunity to demonstrate that facts and the truth matter, regardless of who was being interviewed. Running uninterrupted for nearly half of the news broadcast, Dokoupil interviewed Trump at a Ford Motor Co. factory in Dearborn, Michigan. Over the course of the 14-minute back-and-forth, a number of issues were covered – from the U.S. economy and the killing of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent to accusations that Trump weaponized the Department of Justice to go after Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell and more. One of the reasons why so many subjects were able to be discussed had to do with the lack of follow-up and fact-checking on Dokoupil's part.
Though threatening "very strong action" against Iran over its leaders' killing of protestors, Trump offered little in terms of what that could mean – even in generalities. In addition, Trump boasted of having "ended eight wars" (a claim that's been debunked) and made claims that "there's no inflation," adding that current economic factors in play are at levels "that they haven't seen in about nine years." Trump's words aren't supported by the numbers, though. In December 2025, consumer prices rose about 2.7% (according to the Department of Labor), and inflation was below 2% at specific points during Trump's first term.
Shortly after, Dokoupil posted a clip of how he wrapped the broadcast, reaffirming that "You may not agree with everything you hear on our broadcast, but we trust you to hear it, and we trust you to decide for yourselves." That sounds eerily too much like the FOX "News" motto, "We Report. You Decide," which is just another way of abdicating your commitment as a journalist to the truth:
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