See-BS settles with Trump over selective edited interview (07-02-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] So, Paramount Global and CBS agreed to pay President Donald Trump a sum of money that could reach north of $30 million in order to settle Trump's election interference lawsuit against the CBS network.

[00:00:53] He's going to get $16 million up front. This will cover legal fees, costs of the case, and make contributions to his future presidential library or charitable causes to be determined at Trump's discretion.

[00:01:14] There is something just ironically rich about these media outlets funding his presidential library. Right? They have so besmirched themselves with all of the smirch that they're going to fund a museum to him.

[00:01:43] Right? He should... You know when you go into the museums and stuff and they have like, you know, this piece is like, thank you to our patron, you know, so-and-so, whatever. They should put little plaques on things like, you know, oh, here is a pair of the gold sneakers that he was selling. And like, they'll put one, you know, and it'll be under a glass case, be lights on it and stuff. And it'll have like the MAGA shoe or whatever it is.

[00:02:12] And I'll say, this exhibit made possible by CBS. They should put those little placards everywhere.

[00:02:19] There is an anticipation that, so the $16 million is up front and then another allocation, maybe in the same amount or pretty close to it, will be set aside then for advertisements, public service announcements, or other similar transmissions in support of conservative causes by the network in the future.

[00:02:50] So you are going to get a conservative voice on CBS. Yeah, it just took them losing a lawsuit. Fox News Digital reports, with these considerations, CBS would pay well in excess of the $15 million that ABC paid Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit last year. Current Paramount management disputes the additional allocation.

[00:03:19] Okay, so Paramount, the parent company of CBS, they're like, no, no, no, that's not accurate. Don't know. I don't know all of the terms. Like, this is obviously, these things are, you know, kept under wraps, I guess. But Paramount says they dispute the additional allocation. I don't know if they're disputing the amount of the money or they're saying we're not going to be spending it on those things.

[00:03:41] Sources close to the situation told Fox News Digital that CBS has agreed to update also its editorial standards to install a mandatory new rule, which puts their rule count now at one. Going forward, the network will promptly release full, unedited transcripts of future presidential candidates' interviews.

[00:04:12] But not the video? See, I would want, and this is one of those things, look. I, um, I came up in an age of journalism when, uh, you know, we did not have all of the digital platforms. And so when I would go out and I would cover a city council meeting, I would walk away from that meeting with three to four hours of audio on a good night.

[00:04:38] And I would pull sound bites out of that meeting and I would put them into a news story. In a news story, uh, we were told at the time had to be no more than like 40 seconds, 45 if you were pushing it. So you shot for 35 to 40 seconds package. And then I would, I would record, um, two versions with different sound bites. I would write them up differently.

[00:05:05] And then I would leave extra sound bites with, uh, text so the anchors could read those too. So I was basically creating four versions of every story. Okay. Uh, that was, and, and, and that's if the city council just did one story. Like if they had three or four items on their agenda that were newsworthy, I would end up doing four versions of all three or four of those stories.

[00:05:28] Anyway, I say all of that to say that I am, I am well acquainted and have actually, I'm going to tell on myself here. I have participated in, I have committed acts of selective editing. I am guilty of selectively editing things because you always have to selectively edit when you have a time constraint, right? I had 35 to 40 seconds.

[00:05:58] When I worked in television, the packages over in TV, they run about 90 seconds. So you have a little bit more time to tell the story, show video, have more sound bites, longer sound bites, but you were capped at 90 seconds. Minute and a half. That's what you had. So you can't, if you sit down and do an interview with somebody and the interview runs 10 minutes, you cannot post the whole thing or you can't use all of the 10 minutes in a 90 second TV package.

[00:06:26] However, nowadays with the, uh, with the interweb, you are now able to post up like the entire interview, which you should do. It's one of the things that actually podcasting, uh, does very well with, with, with its long format, long form interviews, um, that are not edited. Right. They're authentic. It's a full conversation. You're getting the whole conversation with your guest.

[00:06:57] Uh, no, some podcasts do editing, obviously, but if you're sitting down to interview Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the last election cycle and you're CBS and you have a platform, you know, not just on the, uh, on the TV side, but you also have your, your digital products. There really isn't a reason to not make the full interview available for anybody wants to see it. Why wouldn't you do it?

[00:07:26] It's just going to get you clicks, right? Just say, here's the full story. And if you want to watch the, or here's the story. And if you want to watch the full interview, here's the link to that. And then you get an extra click, but they didn't do that for Kamala Harris's interview with 60 minutes. Remember they edited, they said, well, they, they sent out a promo, you know, this week on 60 minutes, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

[00:07:55] And then, you know, show a clip of the question and her answer. But then when they ran the story, same question, different answer. And so the accusation was that they, uh, they edited, they selectively edited her answer to make her seem more competent. I mean, as competent as one can with the word salad that she speaks in. And so the allegation, so then they asked, like, can we have the full transcript?

[00:08:24] Can we get the full video? And, uh, CBS refused to release the transcript or the video. They didn't want to get, they didn't want to give it up. Now, why would you do that? You're a news organization. You had the Democrat nominee for president, who's the nominee because of a coup against her boss, right? You have this 10 minute, 20 minute interview. Why would you not want voters to see the whole interview? Why would you not want clicks for your website?

[00:08:53] Why would you not want people to be informed? It answers, the question answers itself, right? Going forward now, the network will promptly release the full unedited transcripts. And see, I don't think this is enough. They're calling it Trump, the Trump rule. Okay. But I don't think that's enough. I think you should willingly, voluntarily do the transcripts and release the full video. Why not? Seriously. Why not?

[00:09:23] What possible argument is there for you not to release the full raw tape? Especially if it's of the, you know, candidate to be the leader of the free world. Why wouldn't you do that? Unless you're trying to hide their poor performance. And the only reason you would do that is because you want them to win. You think it would help their opponent by releasing the full transcript and the video. And here's the thing.

[00:09:51] We learned with Joe Biden's interview that he sat for his deposition, whatever, with the, what was his name? Or, or her, Robert Herr, right? When he sat with her for that whole interview. And they released the transcript. And they're like, okay, can we get the audio? Can we get the video? And they're like, no. DOJ would not release the audio. Why?

[00:10:14] Because reading the cold transcript, you don't get the extent of the damage that the interview actually conveys when you hear it. Which is, you know, on a transcript, it's like, oh, okay. And he, you know, Joe Biden starts talking and then there's a dot, dot, dot. And then he says, what? Uh, hmm. What? Huh? Whatever. Whatever. But what you lose is the amount of time in between all of those grunts.

[00:10:45] And in some cases it was like 10 seconds and it's just dead air. And you just hear the clock in the background. Tick, tick, tick, tick. As he's searching for the memory or the words. It's way worse to hear it than to just simply read the transcript. So I would say, just release the whole thing. Why did you even need to go through all of this? Just release the video. And especially after the election, it's over. Just release the video. You guys could have avoided all of this.

[00:11:15] All right. If you're listening to this show, you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:11:43] I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:12:13] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let's head over and chat with David. Welcome to the show, David. How are you? Good. Good. Thank you. I'm calling because it's a little confusing to me what the problem with the Medicaid cuts really is.

[00:12:34] As I understand it, those cuts were denominated by how much had been measured as fraudulent or people not working, not even agreeing to work but receiving benefits or by some fraudulent activity sucking money out of Medicaid.

[00:12:57] So I don't understand why Tillis is upset or why he thinks North Carolina is going to be terribly, terribly impacted by that unless we've got a whole lot of fraud going on or a whole lot of people that aren't willing to work. So, number one, there isn't a work requirement. The Senate bill puts in this work requirement for the Medicaid expansion cohort. That's the group that we're talking about. Did you hear?

[00:13:25] So last hour, I did a deep dive on all of this and the mechanism that Tillis is trying to protect. And what, in short form, what it is is that you've got the expansion that occurred in 2023 in North Carolina. The feds were offering 90% matching for every, for those expansion population, 90% federal match. And so what the North Carolina legislature did was they put a tax on hospitals and providers.

[00:13:53] But then when they get the federal money, they do a rebate essentially back to those providers in the, in the same amount. So it's basically offloading the cost through this, what they called the provider tax. They offload the cost to the rest of the country. And the North Carolina law was written in such a way that if the reimbursements ever dropped from a 90-10 split, if they went down, then it would trigger basically a kill switch

[00:14:20] on the entire Medicaid expansion cohort. And so what the Senate bill does triggers that kill switch. So the entire 600,000 plus population under the expansion cohort would now lose access because the state law is written in such a way. So that's what Tillis was trying to protect was this, this mechanism that had been developed,

[00:14:48] not just by North Carolina Republicans, but other state bodies, they had devised this way to offload the full cost off of the state taxpayers and, and spread that cost around for the rest of the country. And they basically do this sort of money laundering deal through the, the hospitals and the providers. That sounds exactly like what it is. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah. No, and that's, yeah. And that's why people outside of North Carolina are pretty hacked off about it.

[00:15:17] Um, and I guess, uh, I totally understand why. Yeah. Dave, I appreciate the call, sir. Thank you. Take care. Yeah. I mean, it's, there was a piece that, uh, I read through this in the last hour, uh, national review piece called Tom Tillis defends a Medicaid scam. And so, um, we covered that in the last hour. You can get the, uh, uh, the podcast at the Pete pod.com, WBT.com at any of your podcasting platforms.

[00:15:46] Uh, and so you can read how the mechanism actually works. It's broken down very, uh, very well by Michael Cannon. Um, all right. So Trump, Donald Trump was seeking $20 billion in a lawsuit against CBS over its handling of the 60 minutes interview last year with Kamala Harris and Trump accused the network of election

[00:16:12] interference leading up to the November election. CBS does not acknowledge as part of this settlement. They, they do not acknowledge any journalistic wrongdoing. I thought it said for a minute there, any journalism, but, um, no, and they are like, we didn't do anything wrong. The lawsuit alleged CBS deceitfully edited an exchange that she had, that Harris had with

[00:16:38] Bill Whitaker from 60 minutes who asked her why Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't listening to the Biden administration. Harris was widely mocked for the word salad answer that aired in a preview clip of the interview on CBS's face, the nation. However, when the same question aired during a prime time special on CBS, Harris had a different, more concise response. Critics at the time accused CBS news of deceitfully editing Harris's word salad answer to shield

[00:17:08] the democratic nominee from further backlash leading up to election day. The raw transcript and footage released earlier this year by the FCC because the FCC had to get involved. Um, the raw transcript and footage showed that both sets of Harris's comments came in the same response, but CBS had aired only the first half of her response in the face the nation

[00:17:35] preview and then aired the second half during the prime time special. So I think the assumption there is that the prime time special has way more viewers. And so they were trying to protect her from a larger audience. CBS has denied any wrongdoing stood by the broadcast. Um, and the key for me, much like the ABC news settlement, which was a $15 million settlement

[00:18:02] after, uh, George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and incorrectly asserted that Trump had been found liable for rape. He wasn't. ABC additionally paid a million dollars for president Trump's legal fees as well. The reason why these outlets settle is because they don't want discovery. Right. CNN, right? Didn't same thing.

[00:18:26] They, they don't want the discovery, which is where the lawyers get access to all of the internal records, all the emails, correspondence and stuff. Can you imagine how bad that stuff was when CBS lawyers looked at what they would have to turn over to the Trump team as part of discovery that they said, you know what? We'll just write you a check for $30 million. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina,

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[00:19:50] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. All right. Jim, welcome to the program. Hello, Jim. Hey, Pete. Hey, what's up? Yeah, just a couple of general comments.

[00:20:11] Tillis, I mean, it looks to me like he's using the Medicaid or funding, all those arguments, as kind of an excuse in the BBB. But I think he was also thinking about his competition in a proposed upcoming Senate race. And, you know... Who do you think that competition would be that so scared him?

[00:20:41] Well, there's... I mean, you just had it on your news. I mean, three or four different people. It's going to be some real competition on the Republican side. Right, but... Well, but think about it, Jim. If you've got Pat Harrigan, if you've got Pat Harrigan, you've got Tim Moore. First off, I don't even think any of them would actually challenge him in a primary. We had Andy Nilsson, who had announced, and we had Don Brown, who announced...

[00:21:05] I don't think you get any elected members of Congress to try to leave their seats as a member of Congress to run for the Senate seat against an incumbent Republican. Right? So I think that they're... Yeah. I was specifically thinking about Whatley. And then, of course, Laura Trump. I mean, just could be a kingmaker. So... In the race. Yeah, I think Whatley... So I don't think Whatley would have done it.

[00:21:34] He said his focus is on the midterms. I think Trump wants to keep him where he is because he's been successful doing it. And for the same reason, I don't think Whatley leaves a post in order to challenge an incumbent like Tillis in a primary. And as far as Laura Trump goes, I think, yes, like she is sort of... We've been using this term right of first refusal for her. Like, I think if she says she's going to run, then I think everybody else clears the field for her and she walks in. Well, maybe not all.

[00:22:04] You probably still would have a couple of the candidates still running. But I don't think you get any Congress members that run against her. But I don't know if she actually wants to do it. She's got her gig at Fox News. Right? She's got young kids at home. And what? To go to the U.S. Senate where you're not going to be able to actually do anything? Again, so I don't know if she wants to do it, but I don't think she would have challenged Tillis in a primary.

[00:22:36] Yeah. Well, Tillis never has really impressed me with some of his other decisions through his career. I didn't have any choice, so I went ahead and voted for him because I certainly didn't want to vote for a Democrat in the last Senate race. Or the Democrat that was at least opposing him at the time. But you just reported a few days ago he only had $4 million in his campaign bank account.

[00:23:04] I mean, that won't even be... It could easily turn out to be a $50 to $100 million race. And so that would put him back in... He's a little bit old, too. That would put him back into basically an eight-year commitment. If he were to win... First of all, he's still got another, what, 18, 20 months to go? Yeah, about 18 months. Be nothing but pure fundraising, wall to wall.

[00:23:32] And then if he won, another six years. And he pretty much spelled it out about his grandkids. But I think age is a key factor because the really long-term successful senators... I'm thinking of the Thurmans, the Fritz Hollings, the... Was it Sam Irvin in North Carolina? And then Graham now in South Carolina. These guys get up there and they split the rail, the political rail, all the time.

[00:24:02] And one of the reasons is it's going to keep them in the Senate for 30 or 40 years. Just like Thurman did in South Carolina. He was a Democrat at one time. So that's what... And then Tillis' age, you put all that into a pot and stew and you stir it around a little bit. I think the excuse about the Medicaid and everything kind of became a good arguing point for Tillis to get out. That's kind of my theory about that.

[00:24:31] I don't think it was a... I don't think... And he had... Well, I went over this Monday. There was a report from Ruben Jones at Spectrum News. I don't think the Medicaid argument that Tillis was making was the reason for him to get out. I think he had... No, I don't either. Okay. I just think it was a good excuse, an argument he was using at the time. But that's not... But he hasn't used the Medicaid thing as an excuse to get out. He... So he has... But I have a... Okay.

[00:25:00] I have a general comment about that, too. I mean, there is no free market in healthcare in this country. There is no industry in this country that occupies... I keep hearing the economists say it's roughly a sixth to maybe even a fifth of our economy. I hold the associated medical expense and everything. And there's fabulous medical campuses everywhere you go in this country, especially in this state. I mean, they're just fabulous.

[00:25:30] And I don't think 20 to 40 percent of them would even be built or so plush if it wasn't for the government's guaranteed 70 to 80 cents on the dollar of literally every patient that comes in the door. There is no other industry like that anywhere in this country. So that's part of the lack of... What's the word I'm looking for? Business competition.

[00:25:59] It's just not a free system. It'll be an ongoing issue for the rest of our lives until the government gets out of it. The other types of insurance... And the government's not getting out of it, Jim. And that's the whole point of the Medicaid expansion was to get more people on the rolls to then pave the path to make government in charge of all of it. There'll never be any control of medical costs or delivery services in the country. Boom. The debate's over. Jim, I got to run.

[00:26:29] Jim, I appreciate the call. I recommend go check out Spectrum One's tweet by Ruben Jones. He lays out Tillis' decision-making process and why he decided not to run again. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life. And our stories are told through images and videos.

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[00:27:45] The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, issued a press release after internal FBI emails revealed that the FBI suppressed intelligence of alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election. It's not the last election, although I'm sure China was messing around there too.

[00:28:14] But this is from 2020, right? When Biden beat Trump in 2020, there was Chinese interference in that election. The FBI was informed about it and they suppressed it. Why?

[00:28:33] According to Grassley's office, to insulate then-FBI Director Christopher Wray from criticism after Wray had provided inaccurate and contradictory testimony to Congress. So, Wray had gone before Congress, said one thing, and that was not true. So, they suppressed the intelligence.

[00:28:58] The FBI declassified and provided the requested records to Chuck Grassley along with an accompanying cover letter after Grassley initially received information from whistleblower disclosures. The FBI emails offer an inside look at the Bureau's decision to recall and suppress what's called an intelligence information report or an IIR. They suppressed it. They recalled it.

[00:29:27] This IIR came from the FBI's Albany Field Office in upstate New York on September 25, 2020. So, like not even two months before the election. The IIR contained information from an FBI confidential human source alleging that the Chinese government was producing, quote,

[00:29:49] tens of thousands of fraudulent driver's licenses to manufacture mail-in votes for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

[00:30:02] According to the FBI, these allegations, despite showing signs, initial signs of credibility, were allegedly never fully investigated due to the FBI's sudden and, quote,

[00:30:22] abnormal decision to halt the investigation and bury the IIR's existence, preventing any additional FBI field offices, as well as other intelligence community elements, from accessing or studying the documents. This is similar to the story we talked about a couple of weeks ago, right? Where they had created in the FBI database, right, of all of their files and stuff,

[00:30:50] and they created like a special designation that blinded every other field office and agent from the existence of cases that were opened. I believe the cases were about Hunter Biden's laptop, if I recall correctly, but I don't recall exactly what it was, or maybe it was Steele dossier, something. I forget what. But they blinded everybody in the agency.

[00:31:20] So, like, you could go to this database, you can type in some key search words or case numbers or whatever, and it would flag stuff and would pull it back in the search results, and it would say, yes, there's a case, you know, it's about Pete Callender, but that's a top-secret case, you can't look at it. But at least you would know that there was a case. But they had created this other classification where, if you ran a search term for my name, it wouldn't even show up.

[00:31:50] So while there were documents, there were cases and information and reports about me, you would not know that. So you would not know if there's a larger investigation going on, and you might very well have benefited from that information while you're investigating some other case. That's what this sounds like, that they buried it.

[00:32:16] The FBI stated reason for doing this was because, quote, the reporting will contradict Director Wray's testimony. Quote, these records smack of political decision-making and prove that Christopher Wray-led FBI to be a deeply broken institution. Ahead of a high-stakes election happening amid an unprecedented global pandemic, the FBI turned its back on its national security mission, he said. That grassily said.

[00:32:43] Yeah, because remember, you needed the driver's licenses in order to do the mail-in ballots. And we needed all the mail-in ballots because everybody was going to die of COVID. Well, the people who didn't die from net neutrality, obviously. According to the Assistant Section Chief in the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, the IIR immediately generated a lot of attention from headquarters.

[00:33:09] Upon receiving this report, the IIR, the FBI Albany officials said, quote, We have no reason to recall at this point. Like, why are you recalling this report? Minutes later, the Albany Field Office was commanded to recall the IIR at the direct request of headquarters officials, including a person named Nikki Flores, then Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.

[00:33:35] Months before dismissing the IIR, Flores provided an unnecessary briefing to Chuck Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson regarding the FBI's investigation into the Biden family. The briefing was supposedly classified, but it was then leaked to the press in an effort to falsely smear Grassley and Johnson's investigation as Russian disinformation.

[00:34:05] Following the IIR's recall, FBI headquarters informed field offices that, quote, Everything runs through D.C. Because Christopher Wray had testified before Congress,

[00:34:28] We have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it is by mail or otherwise. That's what Wray had said. That was not true. I will say also that the Foreign Influence Task Force has since been disbanded under Trump. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:34:55] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.