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AMERICANALMANAC (Alex Tanzer) - Rosie O'Donnell calls CBS settlement with Trump a 'bribe' and declares independent media dead in America Tue Jul 28 18:49:44 2026

Rosie O'Donnell accused CBS of paying a "bribe" to President Trump by settling his "60 Minutes" lawsuit for $16 million, and claimed the country no longer has an independent press. O'Donnell made the comments Monday on "Bleep! with Ana Navarro," the podcast hosted by "The View" co-host Ana Navarro. The liberal comedian said CBS had […] The post Rosie O'Donnell calls CBS settlement with Trump a 'bribe' and declares independent media dead in America appeared first on American Almanac .

Rosie O'Donnell accused CBS of paying a "bribe" to President Trump by settling his "60 Minutes" lawsuit for $16 million, and claimed the country no longer has an independent press. O'Donnell made the comments Monday on "Bleep! with Ana Navarro," the podcast hosted by "The View" co-host Ana Navarro. The liberal comedian said CBS had "capitulated" to the president and called the settlement "unforgivable," echoing language used by former CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert before his show was cancelled. Paramount Global and CBS settled Trump's lawsuit in July 2025 for $16 million. The deal covered legal costs and included a contribution to Trump's future presidential library or charitable causes. It contained no apology and no admission of journalistic wrongdoing. No money went directly to Trump, Fox News Digital reported . Trump had sued CBS over the network's editing of an October 2024 "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He accused CBS of deceptively cutting Harris's answer about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make her look better before the presidential election. A Trump legal spokesperson said at the time of the settlement that "CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle." O'Donnell echoes Colbert's 'bribe' line, from Ireland O'Donnell's language tracked closely with Colbert's own on-air broadside. On "The Late Show" last year, Colbert took direct aim at his own network's decision: "I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's 'big fat bribe.'" Three days after Colbert made those remarks, CBS announced it would cancel "The Late Show" at the end of the 2025, 2026 broadcast season. CBS issued a press release in July 2025 insisting the cancellation was a financial decision and "not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount." Colbert hosted his final episode in May. O'Donnell, who has been a vocal and persistent critic of Trump throughout his political career, picked up where Colbert left off. On Navarro's podcast, she said: "[CBS] capitulated. They did exactly what Stephen Colbert said they did. They gave him a bribe and it's unforgivable." She then broadened her complaint beyond CBS. "We need a very vibrant, alive, independent media," she said. "And we no longer have it in this country." $16 million from CBS, $15 million from ABC, and a pattern O'Donnell left unfinished The CBS settlement was not the only major payout by a legacy network to resolve a Trump-related lawsuit. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump's future presidential foundation or museum after anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly said on air that Trump had been found liable for rape. A civil jury had found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, but Trump was not criminally convicted of rape, a distinction Stephanopoulos did not draw. O'Donnell herself stumbled into that same factual territory during the podcast. She referred to Trump as a "convicted sexual rapist," a characterization that is not accurate. A civil jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, a civil finding, not a criminal conviction. Navarro cautioned O'Donnell against using the phrase. O'Donnell has a long history of making unsubstantiated public claims about Trump , and the exchange was a reminder that loose language about legal findings is exactly the kind of conduct that has cost networks tens of millions of dollars. O'Donnell said she moved to Ireland after Trump won the 2024 presidential election. She has continued to make media appearances from abroad, weighing in on American politics from a comfortable distance. Her personal life has also drawn attention in recent months, including a widely discussed visit with her daughter Chelsea in prison. Skydance merger closed weeks after the settlement The timeline around the CBS settlement raised its own questions. Three weeks after Paramount Global settled with Trump in July 2025, the Federal Communications Commission approved Skydance Media's $8 billion acquisition of Paramount. The merger closed in August 2025. Paramount maintained that the Trump lawsuit was "completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process." But the proximity of the two events, a $16 million settlement with a sitting president followed weeks later by a federal green light for an $8 billion corporate deal, is the kind of sequence that invites scrutiny regardless of what the parties say. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and CBS for comment and did not immediately receive a response. O'Donnell's complaint about the death of independent media lands differently coming from someone who left the country rather than stay and fight. But the underlying facts she pointed to, two major networks settling Trump lawsuits for a combined $31 million, a late-night host cancelled days after criticizing his own employer, and a multibillion-dollar merger sailing through federal approval on the heels of it all, are worth examining on their own terms, regardless of who is doing the pointing . When networks pay up and cancel their critics, the problem is not that independent media is under attack. The problem is that it already surrendered. The post Rosie O'Donnell calls CBS settlement with Trump a 'bribe' and declares independent media dead in America appeared first on American Almanac .