Fox News Host Says CBS Parent Company’s Capitulation to Trump Is ‘Tarnishing the Network’

Fox News host Howard Kurtz criticized CBS parent company Paramount over its ongoing efforts to get approval from the Trump administration for a mega-merger with Skydance.

Earlier this month, Paramount settled a lawsuit and agreed to pay President Donald Trump $16 million after he sued the company over a 60 Minutes interview last year with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who was Trump’s presidential opponent at the time. Trump claimed that CBS edited the interview to portray Harris more favorably. Legal experts panned the lawsuit as meritless at best and a serious threat to freedom of speech at worst. The payout was widely regarded as an effort by Paramount Chairwoman Shari Redstone as a sop to Trump, whose Federal Communications Commission would have to approve the Skydance merger. And last week, Late Show host Stephen Colbert, a longtime Trump critic, announced that CBS was canceling his show.

Kurtz addressed Colbert’s cancellation on Sunday’s Media Buzz, where the Fox host noted that Colbert was number one in the ratings in his time slot.

“Let’s not forget, for people who haven’t been following this,” Kurtz said to his guest, Brian Steinberg of Variety. “This is about Shari Redstone, who needs Trump administration approval to have this sale to Skydance go through and make a lot of money, in my view, really tarnishing the network of Murrow and Cronkite.”

Steinberg agreed before suggesting that Redstone, a billionaire, will be financially ruined if the merger doesn’t happen.

“This is an owner, a controlling shareholder who has to have the deal go through,” Steinberg said. “She is on the verge of financial ruin, I believe, if it doesn’t happen. She’s in, already a hotspot. This company, Paramount, is not doing as great as it once was 20, 30 years ago, and they need a transformative deal to keep her family fortune, as well as her company in business.”

Watch above via Fox News.