Following a Jan. 13 interview between President Trump and CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil at a Ford plant in Michigan, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt approached the CBS team and relayed Trump’s expectations that the full interview be broadcast without any cuts. Audio obtained by The New York Times captures Leavitt saying that Trump wanted the interview aired unedited and that the network would face legal action if it was not. Leavitt quoted the president telling CBS that if the interview was not shown in its entirety, “we’ll sue your ass off.”
CBS later confirmed that it had always intended to broadcast the entire 13‑minute interview, saying the decision to air it uncut was made independently before filming began. Despite that claim, the exchange highlights ongoing friction between Trump and major news networks over how interviews and coverage are presented.
Some CBS staff members present during the exchange reportedly treated Leavitt’s warning as a joke, though the White House framed it as a serious insistence on transparency for the American public. Leavitt told The New York Times that the American people deserved to see the president’s full remarks without edits or omissions.
The backdrop to this confrontation includes a prior lawsuit Trump filed against CBS over its handling of a separate 60 Minutes interview with then‑Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election cycle. That suit was settled for $16 million ahead of CBS’s parent company Paramount’s merger with another media group, and it appears to have influenced the White House’s insistence on full, unaltered broadcasts of high‑profile interviews.
The exchange also comes amid leadership changes at CBS News, including the appointment of Bari Weiss as editor in chief and a shift in how the network approaches controversial stories. Critics on the right have accused CBS and other legacy outlets of partisan editing and bias, and the White House’s warning underscores the broader political battle over media accountability and editorial fairness.
