Source: The Atlantic
by David Frum
“On Tuesday, the media-and-entertainment conglomerate Paramount announced a $16 million payment to President Donald Trump’s future presidential library. The payment settled a lawsuit that Trump had filed against the Paramount-owned broadcaster CBS because he was unhappy with the way the network had edited an election-season interview with then–Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump’s lawsuit was about as meritless as a lawsuit can be, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. If CBS were a freestanding news organization, it would have fought the case and won. But like the Disney-owned network ABC, which also paid off Trump for an almost equally frivolous lawsuit, CBS belongs to a parent corporation with regulatory business before Trump-appointed agencies. … What’s going on here is extortion — and it does not get any less extortionate for being laundered through Trump’s hypothetical future library.” (07/04/25)