White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CBS News to air an interviewwith President Donald Trump in full or face a lawsuit, according to an audio recording of the exchange reviewed by The Washington Post.
“He said, make sure you guys don’t cut the tape. Make sure the interview is out in full,” Leavitt told new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, relaying a message from the president ahead of the interview last week. “He said, if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.”
Dokoupil responded with levity: “He always says that!”
The New York Times first reported on the exchange. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The moment we booked this interview we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety,” a CBS spokeswoman wrote in a statement.
Before winning reelection in 2024, Trump sued CBS News for its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, then the vice president and Trump’s rival in the election. Trump’s lawsuit said the edited version was intended to “confuse, deceive, and mislead the public” and deliver the Nov. 5 election to Harris. CBS maintained that Harris’s answer was edited for time considerations only, a long-standing practice in television, just as space considerations come into play for other media outlets. In July, CBS settled the lawsuit out of court for $16 million.
Later in the summer, CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, was purchased by Skydance, whose CEO, David Ellison, is the son of billionaire Trump ally and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. In October, the Paramount Skydance chief executive arranged the joint company’s purchase of the conservative opinion website the Free Press, run by former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, and installed Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News, reporting directly to him.
Weiss’s early tenure has been marked by layoffs and consternation among staffers about their new leader’s direction, story ideas, and deference to the government. In December, Weiss faced staff blowback at “60 Minutes” for shelvinga segment on the El Salvador prison CECOT because the production team was unable to secure an on-camera interview with an administration official.
Dokoupil, who became the anchor of CBS’s storied evening news program earlier this month, has made a point of taking a different tack on the air, saying “People do not trust us like they used to.”
Trump has expressed criticism of CBS News since it came under the new owners and Weiss’s editorship began. “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME!” Trump wroteon Truth Social in December. “Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”
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