Trump Confronted by Reporter Over Bombshell Paramount Deal After Rally

President Donald Trump was confronted over his bombshell settlement with Paramount and CBS, and whether it was a deciding factor in a pending mega-merger.

Paramount announced Tuesday that they will pay Trump $16 million to settle what most experts consider to be a meritless lawsuit over a 2024 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump was confronted about the deal as he returned from a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines and spoke to reporters at Joint Base Andrews Thursday night.

The president responded by denying the deal was connected to the Skydance merger, and by rattling off a familiar string of falsehoods about the interview in question:

REPORTER: What do you make of the deal that your lawyer struck with CBS’s parent company? Can you talk about that and have you had any conversations with Larry Ellison about expectations you might have for Skydance and PSAs that they would run should they take over Paramount?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, Larry Ellison’s a friend of mine. He’s a great guy. I think he’s the buyer. But we did a deal for about 16 million dollars plus. 16 million or maybe more than that in advertising. So it’s a combination of 16 plus 16 plus. So it is like 32 to maybe 35 million dollars. I think that’s what they did.

This has nothing to do with Larry Ellisson. [Who] I think is going to run CBS really well. And I think it’s making a good deal to buy it. I think he’s great, he’s got a son who’s a fantastic young man too.

But what they did was incredible, they took an answer from Kamala just before, the day before the election, and it was a horrible answer. And they took the answer out in its entirety and they put another answer in, a different answer. That was a different part of the interview because the answer she gave was so bad it is like election threatening.

And I’ve seen it all, but I’ve never seen that. Nobody has. And we understand that was done in other locations also with respect to answers.

But think of it. One of the most important questions, maybe the most important question, she gave a horrible answer to it. So they took an answer from another part of the interview and they inserted it.

Nobody’s ever seen that before. So I think they made a wise decision to settle.

REPORTER: Is that 16 million for the ad? Is that part of contingency for your administration to approve the merger? For the sale of the company?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That has nothing to do with that, this is totally separate.

This was when I was running. This had nothing to with what was taking place in government. This is when I running.

This was essentially the night before the election and they did this and we thought it was despicable actually.

Watch above via the White House press pool.