Trump vs the Media: Here We Go Again

Trump wins a big settlement -- but at what cost?

Chalk up another victory (if that’s the right word) for Donald Trump — and another loss for a free press in the United States of America.

Trump just got a $16 million payday from Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, to settle a $20 billion lawsuit in which Trump alleged that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential campaign in order to help her and hurt him.

To promote the interview, CBS ran a portion of it on “Face the Nation” — a “word salad” version of an answer to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That night, a shorter, more intelligible answer to the same question ran on “60 Minutes.”

“60 Minutes” didn’t put words in Harris’ mouth. It didn’t report anything that was factually incorrect. And there’s no evidence CBS News was trying to help her campaign and sink Trump’s. It simply was the kind of editing decision made all the time in American journalism.

Legal experts said the lawsuit was baseless. Even Paramount, just days before it settled with Trump, called it “meritless” and said that he was trying “to evade bedrock First Amendment principles.” But they paid Trump anyway — to smooth the way for a multi-billion dollar merger of Paramount with Skydance Media, a deal that would require a stamp of approval from Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission.

To some, it looked like an old-fashioned, not too subtle shakedown by Trump. But a spokesman for his legal team said that the settlement was “another win for the American people” delivered by the president, who was holding “the fake news media accountable.”

Are there liberal journalists who relish the opportunity to bring Trump down? Sure. But not all the news our president finds unacceptable is “fake news.” Sometimes it’s just unpleasant news. The New York Times got it right when it reported that, “The deal [to settle his lawsuit] is the clearest sign yet that Mr. Trump’s ability to intimidate major American institutions extends to the media industry.”

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have warned that any payment by Paramount to Trump could be construed as a bribe, and they said they would consider holding a congressional hearing about it.

“Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval,” is what Democratic Senator Ron Wyden posted on social media. “When Democrats retake power, I’ll be first in line calling for federal charges. In the meantime, state prosecutors should make the corporate execs who sold out our democracy answer in court.”

And Trump apparently isn’t through tormenting journalists. He recently called pollsters for the New York Times, ABC News, the Washington Post and Fox News “negative criminals” who should be “investigated for ELECTION FRAUD.” Their “crime”: publishing polls that show he has net negative approval ratings.

Wait. There’s more. The president is also threatening to sue CNN. “They may be prosecuted for having given false reports on the attack in Iran,” Trump said. He had said Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated” — but CNN said maybe not, citing an analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency, “So they may be very well prosecuted for that,” according to Trump. “What they did there, we think, is totally illegal.”

No, again. What they did was totally legal. It’s called reporting the news. Someone needs to tell the president that that’s not a crime. But since he surrounds himself with sycophants, don’t hold your breath waiting for someone with a modicum of courage to deliver that kind of news.

A free country needs a free press — even one that at times abuses its considerable power; one that has its own biases to contend with. It’s not always fair, but that’s how it works. Kids in social studies class know that, even if our president doesn’t grasp the concept. What a free country doesn’t need is the immense power of the federal government wielded as a weapon to intimidate news organizations.

You know what else a free country like ours doesn’t need? A president who thinks he’s a king — a monarch who relishes the power to threaten journalists, to sue them, because they have the audacity to publish news that his royal highness doesn’t like.

Donald Trump has been the victim of unscrupulous enemies who have waged lawfare against him. Now he’s waging lawfare against the press. You think the irony of that might have crossed his mind?

I don’t.