On Monday’s “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert marked his return from summer hiatus by denouncing the $16 million settlement Paramount reached with Donald Trump, declaring the deal to be a “big fat bribe” to win approval for the company’s merger with Skydance Media.
“While I was on vacation, my parent corporation Paramount paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his 60 Minutes lawsuit,” Colbert said during his monologue, adding, “as someone who has always been a proud employee of this network. I’m offended, and I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”
Colbert explained that the payment settled Trump’s “nuisance lawsuit” based on the false claim that CBS-produced “60 Minutes” deceptive edited footage from its interview last fall with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. As Colbert noted, Paramount’s statement on the settlement even declared that lawsuit to be “completely without merit.”
“And keep in mind, Paramount produced ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.’ They know ‘completely without merit,’” he joked.
‘Now, unlike, unlike the payoffs from ABC and Twitter,” Colbert said, referencing earlier payments to settle some of Trump’s other lawsuits, “Paramount’s settlement did not include an apology — that’s good.”
“Instead,” Colbert continued as he set up another joke, “the corporation released a statement where they said, ‘You may take our money, but you will never take our dignity. You may, however, purchase our dignity for the low, low price of $16 million. We need the cash.’”
The Colbert laid into Paramount more pointedly. “Now, 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,” he said, “because this all comes as Paramount owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.”
At this, Colbert started dancing glibly to mock the name “Skydance.”
Watch the clip below:
More to come…