CBS’s flagship news magazine show 60 Minutes is upping the ante in its fight against Donald Trump. The show’s upcoming Sunday segment will focus on how the Trump administration has targeted law firms in an apparent quest to punish those who dared to challenge him when he was out of office, according to an online listing for the episode.
“On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to wield the power of the presidency to go after his perceived enemies,” the listing reads. “Now in the White House, Trump is using executive orders to target some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.”
The show has had a tumultuous year covering the MAGA leader, who has continued to dedicate significant attention to a sit-down interview that aired on 60 Minutes prior to Election Day with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has repeatedly argued that a version of Harris’s answer regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the broadcast had essentially “defrauded” the American public, since two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her 21-second answer on different days.
Trump sued CBS for $20 billion after the interview, claiming that the different clips amounted to “election interference” and that Harris should drop out of the presidential race over the GOP-baked scandal.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Trump and his allies have also insisted that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answer. And on Wednesday, the president attempted to rope The New York Times into the affair, protesting online that the newspaper’s decision to quote individuals who described the case as “baseless” is tantamount to “tortious interference.”
An independent review by the Federal Communications Commission showed that the two answers were in fact cut from the same longer response. Editing answers for time is considered general practice in television news and regularly happens.
The mounting pressure from the lawsuit forced out the show’s chief producer, Bill Owens, last week, shocking employees who described the 24-year show runner’s exit as akin to pulling a “pin from his last grenade.” Owens had refused to apologize or admit wrongdoing in handling Harris’s interview. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is reportedly moving to settle the lawsuit.
“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” one unidentified 60 Minutes employee told CNN, referring to the non-executive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global. “60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer.”
But regardless of Trump or executive perspectives, the media industry has continued to recognize the value of 60 Minutes’ programming. On Thursday, the show’s controversial Harris segment was nominated for an Emmy.
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