The Trump White House is not playing games with the press anymore, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt just proved it in spectacular fashion. On Tuesday, President Trump taped a 13 minute interview with CBS News, and the moment the cameras stopped rolling, Leavitt delivered a message that could not have been clearer.
Air it all, or else.
According to an audio recording first obtained by The New York Times, Leavitt bluntly told the CBS team that President Trump personally warned them not to edit the interview. “He said, ‘Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,’” she said. Then came the part that made newsroom lawyers choke on their coffee. “He said, ‘If it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your a** off!’”
That is not subtle messaging. That is accountability.
The exchange involved CBS’s new prime time anchor Tony Dokoupil, who awkwardly responded, “Yeah, we’re doing it, yeah.” Whether he sounded confident or terrified is open to interpretation, but the message landed. CBS aired the full, unedited interview later that evening.
CBS claims that was the plan all along. Sure it was.
Context matters here. President Trump already sued CBS over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris back in 2024. That case ended with CBS’s corporate parent coughing up $16 million in a settlement. The network can pretend it was a coincidence, but suddenly finding religion on transparency right after being threatened with another lawsuit is not exactly subtle.
Leavitt later summed it up perfectly, saying, “The American people deserve to watch President Trump’s full interviews, unedited, no cuts. And guess what? The interview ran in full.” That is called doing your job, and doing it well.
Not long ago, the idea of a press secretary warning a media outlet about legal consequences would have sent the press corps into hysterics about threats to democracy. Now it barely registers as news, mostly because President Trump has spent years proving that media outlets lie, manipulate, and selectively edit to shape narratives. He is done letting that slide.
Adding to the irony, Dokoupil himself recently went viral after a clip surfaced of him apologizing for pushing fake narratives earlier in his career. During the interview, President Trump even took a personal swipe, telling Dokoupil that he would not have his new job if Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election. When Dokoupil pushed back, Trump joked that maybe he would still be employed, just making a “lesser salary.” Ouch.
CBS appears to be trying to rehabilitate its image, and to their credit, they did air the interview in full. But let’s be honest about why. They remembered what happens when you play games with President Trump and the courts.
Karoline Leavitt did not threaten anyone. She simply reminded CBS of reality. Tell the truth, show the whole tape, or prepare to explain yourself in court. That is what accountability looks like, and it is long overdue in American media.
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