MAGA Thug Kristi Noem’s Hateful Attack on CBS Unmasks a Big Trump Scam

Here again, with this edit, CBS didn’t do anything wrong, and many lawyers had predicted CBS would have won in court if it had litigated. But executives at CBS parent company Paramount viewed the settlement as a way to facilitate the Trump administration’s approval of its merger with Skydance, which was subsequently completed in August.

It’s telling that despite that settlement, Noem has now gone right back to the same poisoned well, accusing CBS of the same bogus “deceptive editing” scam that Trump used to extort CBS last time around. Why, it’s almost as if CBS’s initial willingness to settle in the face of equally bogus claims just might have encouraged Trump’s thugs to do exactly the same thing again—this time not to extort money, perhaps, but maybe to game the refs so they’re more willing to air their scurrilous smears without challenge next time.

CBS’s response to this latest saga has been largely defensive and even taken on a pleading quality. In a sense, posting the full video of the interview—including numerous unrebutted lies about Abrego Garcia—lets Noem and her falsehoods get their way, and then some.