{"id":524266,"date":"2026-01-18T03:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T03:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/524266\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T03:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T03:46:20","slug":"white-house-threatened-trump-would-sue-cbs-unless-full-interview-aired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/524266\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Threatened Trump Would Sue CBS Unless Full Interview Aired"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\n\tThe interview aired in its entirety.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe said, \u2018Make sure you guys don\u2019t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,\u201d Leavitt said, per a recording of the exchange obtained by The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah, we\u2019re doing it, yeah,\u201d Dokoupil responded.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe said if it is not out in full, we will sue your ass off,\u201d Leavitt said. <\/p>\n

\n\tDokoupil, apparently making some levity of the moment, is heard saying, \u201cHe always says that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA CBS News<\/a> spokesperson said, \u201cThe moment we booked this interview we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether 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\u2019t like. Such a notion is especially sensitive at CBS News, which was a target of Trump\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tAs 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new owners of Paramount, now led by CEO David Ellison, then hired Bari Weiss<\/a>, the founder of the center right site The Free Press, to serve as the news division\u2019s editor in chief.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019s claims go unchallenged. <\/p>\n

\n\tDokoupil approached another moment a different way. The president claimed there was \u201cno inflation,\u201d when in fact, consumer prices rose about 2.7% in December, according to the Department of Labor. The\u00a0CBS Evening News\u00a0anchor didn\u2019t correct Trump, but noted that \u201cwhen I travel the country and I go all over the place and I talk to everyday Americans, they tell me they don\u2019t feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt another point in the interview, Trump, speaking about the economy during his second term, boasted to Dokoupil that if Harris had been elected, \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t have this job, certainly, whatever the hell they are paying you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDokoupil later said that \u201cI do think I\u2019d have this job even if the other guy won.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah, but at a lesser salary,\u201d Trump responded.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump sat down with CBS\u2019 60 Minutes in October for an interview with Norah O\u2019Donnell. 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe news division came under further scrutiny this week for an online story the cited to unnamed \u201cU.S. officials as claiming that the ICE officer who shot Renee Good suffered \u201cinternal bleeding to the torso.\u201d 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<\/a> this week that there was internal dissent on going with the story. A CBS News spokesperson told the publication that the piece \u201cwent through its rigorous editorial process and decided it was reportable based on the reporting, the reporters, and the sourcing.\u201d Other outlets, including ABC News, also reported on the claim about Ross\u2019 condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Donald Trump gave a 13-minute interview to new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil earlier this week,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":524267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[127560,26871,69,36555,8133,50,201939,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-524266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-bari-weiss","10":"tag-cbs-news","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-electionline","13":"tag-karoline-leavitt","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-tony-dokoupil","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115914052949672604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}