After Donald Trump gave a 13-minute interview to new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a message to the anchor and his news team with a message from POTUS: Air the complete interview, or be sued.

The interview aired in its entirety.

“He said, ‘Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,” Leavitt said, per a recording of the exchange obtained by The New York Times.

“Yeah, we’re doing it, yeah,” Dokoupil responded.

“He said if it is not out in full, we will sue your ass off,” Leavitt said.

Dokoupil, apparently making some levity of the moment, is heard saying, “He always says that.”

A CBS News spokesperson said, “The moment we booked this interview we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety.”

Whether Trump was joking, serious, or both may not even matter, as the president has threatened lawsuits or filed litigation against news outlets for content he doesn’t like. Such a notion is especially sensitive at CBS News, which was a target of Trump’s litigation last year, in a lawsuit over the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. Even though network attorneys had characterized the lawsuit as without merit, and many legal experts deemed it meritless, Paramount settled the litigation for $16 million as it sought administration approval of its merger with Skydance.

As it sought the FCC greenlight for the transaction, Skydance committed to hiring an ombudsman to take complaints over news programming. It hired Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of a rightward think tank, the Hudson Institute, to fill that role.

The new owners of Paramount, now led by CEO David Ellison, then hired Bari Weiss, the founder of the center right site The Free Press, to serve as the news division’s editor in chief.

The changes have placed extra scrutiny on Dokoupil as he has embarked on a tour of major cities to kick off his tenure in the anchor chair. During the Trump interview on Tuesday, done in Detroit, Dokoupil let some of the president’s claims go unchallenged.

Dokoupil approached another moment a different way. The president claimed there was “no inflation,” when in fact, consumer prices rose about 2.7% in December, according to the Department of Labor. The CBS Evening News anchor didn’t correct Trump, but noted that “when I travel the country and I go all over the place and I talk to everyday Americans, they tell me they don’t feel it.”

At another point in the interview, Trump, speaking about the economy during his second term, boasted to Dokoupil that if Harris had been elected, “You wouldn’t have this job, certainly, whatever the hell they are paying you.”

Dokoupil later said that “I do think I’d have this job even if the other guy won.”

“Yeah, but at a lesser salary,” Trump responded.

Trump sat down with CBS’ 60 Minutes in October for an interview with Norah O’Donnell. The interview lasted about 90 minutes, but only 28 minutes were broadcast. CBS posted a complete transcript and an extended, 73-minute version of the interview online.

The news division came under further scrutiny this week for an online story the cited to unnamed “U.S. officials as claiming that the ICE officer who shot Renee Good suffered “internal bleeding to the torso.” The report followed extensive analysis of videos of the incident in Minneapolis, in which Good was killed. The Department of Homeland Security had characterized Good as a domestic terrorist intending to run over the ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, with her vehicle. But videos show that she had turned her tires away from where he was standing. The Guardian reported this week that there was internal dissent on going with the story. A CBS News spokesperson told the publication that the piece “went through its rigorous editorial process and decided it was reportable based on the reporting, the reporters, and the sourcing.” Other outlets, including ABC News, also reported on the claim about Ross’ condition.