President Donald Trump boasted about his legal crusade against media companies over their coverage during Wednesday’s National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner, citing his multimillion-dollar settlements from CBS News-parent Paramount and ABC News-parent Disney as evidence that “if you bring lawsuits against these guys…they’re so corrupt that they pay it.”
Trump riffed on his distaste for CNN and ABC News during his Wednesday speech, calling ABC “fake news” that was worse than the cable news network. He pointed to his defamation suits against ABC and its anchor, George Stephanopoulos ,over the host’s framing of the president being found liable in a sexual abuse case — which Disney later settled for $16 million — and to a suit against CBS News over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, which Paramount settled for $16 million last year.
“But George Stephanopoulos, they had to pay me $16 million for what they said,” Trump said. “They had to pay me $16 million for what they said. CBS had to pay me $38 million for what they said. It’s actually pretty good— you know, if you bring lawsuits against these guys, they’ll, they’re so corrupt that they pay it.”
The comments add to his previous suggestion that Paramount agreed to pay him more than its $16 million figure through PSAs, which the company has denied. Still, Paramount CEO David Ellison, who has said his company Skydance was not involved in the settlement, has previously sidestepped the claim. (Paramount settled with Trump as the company was seeking FCC approval to complete the Skydance merger.)
Trump then moved on to his ongoing fight with the BBC, which he sued for $10 billion in a federal court in Florida over a misleading editing in a 2024 pre-election documentary that stitched together parts of his Jan. 6 speech. The BBC apologized for the edit, but it has rejected Trump’s claims that the documentary amounted to defamation.
Still, Trump said, “They admitted they were guilty.”
“They admit it,” he continued. “Can you believe it? That’s how crooked they are. Now it’s only a question of how much do I get.”
The BBC asked the court earlier this month to dismiss Trump’s defamation lawsuit, arguing he “cannot plausibly claim that the documentary harmed his reputation” due to his electoral victory in 2024.
Trump has brought other lawsuits against media outlets during his second term over news coverage, including against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Watch his remarks below:
