Over the first 10 months of his second presidency, Donald Trump has not hidden his desire to control the US media industry – from encouraging TV networks to fire journalists, comedians and critics he dislikes to pushing regulators to revoke broadcast licences. Now he seems determined to set the terms for one of the biggest media deals in history.
It’s a deal that could have repercussions not just in the US, but across the world, with not just the future of Hollywood at stake but also the landscape of news.
Another American president likely would have politely declined to comment when asked by a reporter about a massive media merger that would require fact-driven oversight and regulatory approval by a purportedly independent-minded branch of their administration.
But when Trump was asked on Sunday about Netflix’s $82.7bn (£61.8bn) deal to acquire the studio and streaming businesses of Warner Bros Discovery – the media company whose assets run the gamut from Batman and Casablanca to The Sopranos, Succession and CNN – he didn’t hesitate to say he would be “involved” in the review process for the deal.
Days later a media conglomerate with close ties to his administration, Paramount Skydance, the company behind the Paramount Pictures movie studios, CBS US TV network and Channel 5 in the UK, countered with a hostile $108bn offer for the company.
Trump then offered a contrasting commentary on his role.
“I’m not involved in that,” he told reporters on Wednesday, before adding: “I will be probably involved – maybe involved in the decision. It depends. You have some good companies bidding on it.”
Contradicting himself, Trump then laid out a condition for his support of a deal: the company that buys WBD’s studio, HBO and its streaming assets must also acquire its television channels and make big changes at the cable news network he has long despised, CNN.
“I think CNN should be sold, because I think the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,” he said.
Only Paramount – run and backed by Trump supporters – had bid for the entire company.
This isn’t normal, commentators and former antitrust officials were quick to point out. “It’s not designed to be a system where the president wakes up one morning and decides it. It’s actually supposed to be the opposite of that,” said Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, who served in Joe Biden’s White House from 2021 to 2023 as a special assistant to the president for competition and tech policy.
During the Biden administration, “we followed the old rules, and the old rules suggested that the White House had to stay very far away from mergers,” Wu said – though “the parties always wanted us to get involved”.
“It’s all set up to keep the White House away,” he said. “This White House? Totally different kind of place.”
Phillip Berenbroick, who served as chief counsel for the US Senate’s judiciary subcommittee on antitrust matters, said that while “it’s not surprising that [Trump’s] interested and says so publicly, that is different from how most presidents and how most administrations have treated the antitrust review process. I think he does relish playing the role of deal-maker”.
Paramount’s starring role raises the likelihood of Trump’s involvement, considering the company is backed by his longtime friend and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and run by his Trump-friendly son David, who has talked up the company’s “good” relationship with the administration.
Another factor that may well weigh in Paramount’s favour, as far as Trump is concerned, is the role of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose investment company Affinity Partners is an outside funder for the bid – though Trump said earlier this week that he hasn’t talked to him about it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, along with several of her fellow Senate Democrats, has called foul.
“Donald Trump seems to be saying any Warner Bros bidder needs to make a deal with him – and that could involve a donation to his gold-encrusted ballroom, or it could involve getting rid of a news outlet that he doesn’t like or making movies that only flatter him,” she told the Guardian.
“But Donald Trump should not be the ultimate decision maker here. There needs to be a fair and independent review of this deal, and a straightforward application of the strong antitrust laws we already have on the books.”
But despite Trump’s seeming preference, this deal is far from done. Whichever company ultimately wins out for WBD– and WBD has said that it will evaluate Paramount’s proposal and give its shareholders a recommendation within 10 days – the deal will need to be approved by the antitrust division of the justice department, which is run by Gail Slater, a lawyer with a solid reputation around Washington.
Wu emphasised that while the justice department has the most significant role to play, a decision to approve the merger could easily be challenged by a state attorney general or attorneys general, with California – ground zero for the entertainment industry – most likely to take adverse action and potentially hold up the deal.
“Usually people say, ‘Well, it all depends on what Trump thinks.’ But I think it’s actually not that simple,” Wu said, adding, “Trump likes the idea that it all depends on what Trump thinks.”
When asked about the Paramount bid on Monday, Trump played neutral, suggesting that neither Netflix nor Paramount “are particularly great friends of mine” – though a White House official said that he has good relationships with both companies and does not have a position one way or the other.
Trump has acknowledged that he had recently met Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, calling him “fantastic”, though he said Sarandos made no guarantees to him about the merger.
Trump has said approval of the deal would depend on how much market share Netflix would take on by acquiring WBD, which he said “could be a problem”, considering its existing dominance of the streaming business. “I want to do what’s right,” he said. “It’s so very important to do what’s right.”
Because a merger of WBD with either Paramount or Netflix would probably serve to greatly reduce competition in Hollywood, both deals are “highly dubious in terms of legality”, said Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It seems to me that it should be a textbook case of being seen as anti-competitive in defiance of our antitrust laws, but that certainly doesn’t mean it won’t go through.”
Berenbroick, now a senior strategist for the American Economic Liberties Project, predicted that the merger will “raise red flags” for state, federal and global regulators because of the “significant consolidation” that would result. He expressed confidence in the career staffers at the justice department’s antitrust division. “Those people are really professional and good at their jobs,” he said. The department can file a lawsuit to block the deal, as it did – unsuccessfully – in 2017 to stop the merger of AT&T and then-CNN parent company Time Warner.
Trump could hamper the government’s case in a potential lawsuit by making a statement of preference for one bidder or another, creating the perception of a skewed process, industry experts say.
Despite concerns about consolidation, both Netflix and Paramount have argued publicly that their company would have an easier time winning regulatory approval for the deal. And both companies have hired officials with ties to Trumpworld, potentially easing the path to approval. In October, Paramount brought on as chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, who served as head of the department of justice’s antitrust division during the first Trump administration. Not wanting to be outdone, Netflix this past week brought on Virginia Boney Moore, a former special assistant in Trump’s first office of legislative affairs.
But Trump clearly has a closer relationship with the Ellisons, and officials in his White House had previously discussed their preference for Paramount to emerge as the winning bidder for WBD, which formally put itself up for sale in October. In a filing with the US top financial regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paramount said a Netflix acquisition of WBD would come with “with extraordinary regulatory risk” and “a longer timeline to a possible closing” as a result.
During an interview on CNBC on Monday, David Ellison acknowledged having recent conversations with Trump that touched on CNN. (The Guardian first reported in November that Ellison’s father, Larry, had talked with a senior White House official about potentially ousting two anchors the administration views as Trump critics, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar.)
When asked whether he thinks Trump would “embrace” Paramount Skydance owning CNN, Ellison responded, “We’ve had great conversations with the president about this … but I don’t want to speak for him in any way, shape or form.”
Pickard said reported conversations between Trump and the Ellisons about potential firings at CNN are “profoundly troubling” and “just absurd for any democratic society worthy of the name”.
“The end goal of all of this is that Trump wants to snuff out any capacity for dissenting views or independent journalism,” he added.
Trump has largely praised the Ellisons for their stewardship of CBS News, which would probably be combined with CNN. Last month, Trump sat for his first interview with 60 Minutes in five years, and called Bari Weiss, the “anti-woke” commentator who is now the network’s newly appointed top editor, a “great person”. On Sunday, David Ellison sat in Trump’s box at the Kennedy Center Honors award ceremony in Washington which the president himself hosted.
However, minutes after Paramount unveiled its bid on Monday he took to social media to slam the company over CBS’s Sunday news magazine show 60 Minutes interview with the retiring congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. “My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.”
These are just the opening salvoes in a corporate battle that could take months to resolve and will ultimately reshape global media. A veteran of the anti-trust space said it seems likely that Trump could pressure attorney general Pam Bondi to approve a deal of his choosing.
“If the president wants this deal approved and he tells Pam Bondi, ‘I want this deal approved’ … they’ll find a way to approve it,” the veteran said. “But that doesn’t mean that the states can’t come in and fight the deal.”
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