The Monday, July 7, episode of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart featured a conversation between host Jon Stewart and former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft about Paramount’s decision to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount owns Comedy Central, which houses The Daily Show, and Kroft spent 30 years working for 60 Minutes before retiring in 2019.
Stewart said that the settlement must be “devastating” for those who work for 60 Minutes, to which Kroft replied, “Devastating’s a good word. 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.”
Then, Stewart showed a clip of a Trump interview on Fox News that was edited down to air on a morning show before being released in full and pointed out that this was the same thing the president sued Paramount over with its Harris interview.
“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 just did what seems to me to be a more egregious edit?” Stewart asked. “So, explain to me what was going through the mind of Paramount when they said, ‘Oh, yeah, we screwed up, here’s your money’. Why didn’t they fight it?”
Kroft responded, “They never said, ‘We screwed up.’ They just paid the money. It was a shakedown, that’s what I call it. Some people call it extortion, that’s a legal term.”
Stewart wondered if the settlement was made because Paramount is currently being sold to Larry Ellison, a man who was friends with Trump, and his son, David Ellison. “Was this settlement just a payment so that this merger can go through and not be challenged by Trump’s FCC?” the talk show host asked his guest.
“Yes,” Kroft confirmed. “It’s a little complicated.” He explained that Shari Redstone, the head of Paramount, wants to sell the company, adding, “But Donald Trump thought, ‘I’m going to settle the score here.’ He’s said very often, ‘I’m going to go after my enemies.’ He was upset with 60 Minutes and he decided that he was going to sue for $16 million dollars.”
Stewart said it “sounds illegal” for the network to be threatened not to get their multimillion-dollar merger unless Trump gets “a tremendous amount of money,” and Kroft agreed. “I think it is illegal,” he said. “I think it’s a shakedown. It’s not just me or 60 Minutes or you that thinks this is a shakedown. It’s pretty much every reporter who’s looked at this case.”
Kroft added, “I think [Trump] likes to get even with his political enemies. He likes to do things that he feels will intimidate them to stop reporting bad things about him. I think it’s as simple as that.”
Watch the full interview above.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Weekdays, 11/10c, Comedy Central