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GELFAND’S WORLD - Here's a nonsensical question for you: Remember when Joe Biden had that bad night at his presidential debate with Donald Trump? You know, the horrible, awful, couldn't keep his eyes open moment? So, would a television network have had the right to show that excerpt without showing the entire debate unedited? Could one of the Sunday morning news analysis programs such as Meet the Press shown a differently edited excerpt, either longer or shorter?
Clearly the answer is Yes, of course, sure, how can there even be a question about it? It's covered under everything from the First Amendment to long standing tradition to journalism classes.
So Yes is the answer to another question: Could CBS have shown differently edited excerpts of an interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign? It shouldn't even be in question, unless Donald Trump can show some evidence that he was maliciously defamed, and even then he is held to a higher standard of defamation since he is a public person.
So we have two questions:
1) Why was the lawsuit ever filed, considering its lack of legal merit?
2) Why did the defendant, Paramount, settle with Trump to the tune of $16 million?
I don't think we need to waste a lot of time on Question 1. We all know that Trump has made a practice of filing nuisance lawsuits, lawsuits intended to bully and intimidate, and lawsuits intended to force some other party to take a business loss or just to look bad. In other words, Trump files lawsuits just because he can -- because such lawsuits are a way to hurt somebody he wants to hurt and a way to save money or get money.
It's Question 2 that is of interest here. We might even say that it is of grave interest because it affects the future governance of the United States and it signifies our downfall into a banana republic.
Let's consider the question from the side of CBS/Paramount. We know that there was a merger in the making and it stood to make lots and lots of money for the owners. We also know that the federal government has some say in corporate mergers under the antitrust laws and, in this case, because there is federal regulation of the airwaves.
We might pause for a moment and consider the idea of governmental and presidential ethics. The president had a direct financial interest in this merger. In the case of any other administration (particularly a Democratic administration) there would have been yelling and screaming about the conflict and there would have been demands that the president stay out of the merger discussions or divest himself of his conflict.
You will notice that Trump did not divest himself of his conflict. Quite the contrary.
And one more thing. Trump's conflict came not because he originally had some financial interest in CBS or Paramount. No. It's because he created that financial interest by filing the lawsuit about the Kamala Harris interview.
Stir in the fact that the lawsuit was as bogus as they come, and the picture emerges. We already understand that the lawsuit was just thinly veiled extortion on Trump's part. What is of note here is that CBS/Paramount paid the bribe.
And that's the data point we need to be looking at. It's the clue to our status as a government and a nation.
Modern corporate philosophy -- as so many investors and corporate chieftains have lectured us -- is to maximize profits without actually getting sent to prison. There is not a lot of room for ethics or morality in these calculations (witness Theranos or cars that burst into flames or toxic chemicals in household cleaners), just the factoring of risk vs profit.
And that's where the CBS/Paramount deal with Trump is so scary. Basically, it signifies a particular recognition on the part of corporate America:
That deal for the $16 million signifies that the government -- in the person of President Donald Trump -- is open to bribery, and there will be no criminal prosecution by this government if you engage in bribery. To the contrary, if you don't pay the bribe, you will be financially harmed. If you intend to be involved with any sort of negotiation with the government, you had better be willing and able to pay. Trump superficially disguises his demands in the form of lawsuits, but nobody is really fooled, and he isn't too picky about what goes into the lawsuit. The only important issue is that there be some legal excuse for him to take his cut.
We even get to dust off that old joke that an honest politician is one who, when he has been bought, stays bought. You will notice that the merger has already been OK'd by Trump's appointees. We didn't even have to wait for some period of camouflaged hearings -- the government said OK, the owners of Paramount got their two billion, and everybody else in corporate America got the message.
And here is the cold core of that message: Nobody else in government is going to interfere with the extortion and bribery. The heads of the Department of Justice and the FBI have been carefully chosen to be lackies in this criminal enterprise.
It's the recognition by corporate America of the new reality that is the frightening part. If Apple and GM and Microsoft understand that bribery is the newly acceptable system, that makes it all but official.
And that last part leads to one other realization. Some of us have been angry to the point of boycott with CBS and other companies that have played the bribery game, but perhaps we ought to reconsider. They are just doing what they have to in order to make the profits that their shareholders expect. It is up to the elected Republicans to decide whether they are willing to rescue their country.
And what do you call a country which is run by crooks, works through bribery, and has no legal recourse available? The old term Banana Republic works well enough.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
