Jon Stewart may not have been able to give his full thoughts on Paramount’s “shameful settlement” with President Donald Trump over Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview, but that didn’t stop him from asking some telling questions to Steve Kroft, a former 60 Minutes correspondent.
When The Daily Show host kicked off Monday’s episode of the Comedy Central program (which is owned by Paramount Global) with his commentary on the lawsuit settlement, he was quickly cut off by a graphic that read, “Please stand by. Brought to you by Arby’s for when you want a sandwich commensurate with your company’s shame.” The camera eventually cut back to him, concluding, “That’s why it’s so wrong,” before he seemingly realized he was cut off (though the whole bit was obviously planned).
Earlier this month, Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit from Trump, who sued over the editing of an October interview that 60 Minutes conducted with Harris. Under the deal, Paramount will not apologize as part of the settlement, but has agreed to release 60 Minutes transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates after they’ve aired, according to a statement from the company.
The Hollywood Reporter previously reported that CBS News employees were left angry about the settlement, but relieved about the lack of apology. Stewart later asked Kroft about what he heard internally at 60 Minutes, as the host assumed he was still on some “text chains” with current employees and that the settlement is likely “devastating to the people who work in a place that prides themselves on contextual good journalism.”
“Devastating is a good word,” Kroft replied. “I think there’s a lot of fear over there. Fear of losing their job, fear of what’s happening to the country, fear of losing the First Amendment, all of those things.”
After Kroft gave some context surrounding the reason Trump sued in the first place — which was due to the way 60 Minutes edited Harris’ interview and showed different parts of it on separate shows across the network — Stewart pulled up an example of Fox News giving an interview with Trump a similar edit.
“I would like to know why the 60 Minutes edit was worthy of a $16 million acquiescence of what is considered the Tiffany News gold standard network for Paramount of news, where very clearly Fox [News] just did what seems to me to be a more egregious edit?” the host asked.
As for Kroft’s perspective: “It was a shakedown. That’s what I call it.”
Sources previously told THR that Paramount believes the lawsuit posed a threat to Skydance’s deal to acquire the company, which requires regulatory approval, including the transfer of FCC licenses. FCC chairman Brendan Carr (who was nominated by Trump) has said that the 60 Minutes interview would come up in the Commission’s review of the merger. The FCC has since requested the full transcript and unedited footage of the interview.
“Was this settlement just a payment so that this [Paramount-Skydance] merger can go through and not be challenged by Trump’s FCC?” Stewarts asked Kroft, who responded, “Yes.”
“So the implication is you don’t get your $8 billion merger, you don’t get your $2 billion payout [for Shari Redstone, Paramount Global chairwoman and controlling shareholder] unless you give me [Trump] a tremendous amount of money,” Stewart added. “Now that strikes me as — and I’m obviously not a lawyer, but I did watch Goodfellas — that sounds illegal.”