{"id":17914,"date":"2026-01-19T07:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/white-house-told-cbs-news-that-trump-would-sue-if-his-interview-was-edited-2\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T07:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:21:07","slug":"white-house-told-cbs-news-that-trump-would-sue-if-his-interview-was-edited-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/white-house-told-cbs-news-that-trump-would-sue-if-his-interview-was-edited-2\/","title":{"rendered":"White House told CBS News that Trump would sue if his interview was edited"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CBS News is defending its decision to run anchor Tony Dokoupil’s entire interview with President Donald Trump, after a report that the White House threatened to sue the network if it was edited.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a> reported Saturday that it had reviewed unaired footage from immediately after the interview took place.<\/p>\n

As soon as Dokoupil wrapped up his 13-minute interview<\/a> with Trump at a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, press secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a message to Dokoupil and his colleagues that she said came from the president: “Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,” Leavitt said, according to the Times.<\/p>\n

Dokoupil agreed, but Leavitt doubled down. <\/p>\n

“He said, ‘If it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off,’” she said, the Times reported.<\/p>\n

Some CBS staff on hand thought Leavitt was joking, the Times wrote, citing a person familiar with their thinking.<\/p>\n

Leavitt, however, told the Times that “The American people deserve to watch President Trump’s full interviews, unedited, no cuts. And guess what? The interview ran in full.”<\/p>\n

In a statement to the Times, CBS said it was always its intention to air the complete interview.<\/p>\n

“The moment we booked this interview, we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety,” CBS News said.<\/p>\n

Trump sued CBS in 2024 for editing a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in a case that legal observers said lacked merit and that most in the media said involved standard journalism practices.<\/p>\n

The network’s parent company, Paramount, paid Trump a $16 million settlement<\/a>with part of the payment going toward Trump’s legal fees and some to fund his future presidential library. The company — which was seeking federal regulators’ approval at the time for its purchase of Skydance — did not admit fault as part of the deal.<\/p>\n

CBS also recently came under fire after the network’s new editor-in-cheif, Bari Weiss, tabled a story<\/a> in December, hours before it was to air, about allegations of abuse at a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has sent migrants. Weiss said she held the story because it wasn’t ready.<\/p>\n

The story was set to air Sunday evening, BLN reported, citing sources at CBS.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan. 18, 2026, 2:38 PM EST CBS News is defending its decision to run anchor Tony Dokoupil’s entire interview with President Donald Trump, after a report that the White House threatened to sue the network if it was edited. The New York Times reported Saturday that it had reviewed unaired footage from immediately after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}