Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN and HBO, has put itself on the market. And while there are several companies that might be in a position to buy it, that’s not how things work under President Donald Trump. Instead, his administration gets to decide.
So while both Netflix and Comcast have expressed interest, they probably don’t have a shot. And even though Warner Bros. turned down three offers from Paramount, the companies might soon be merging anyway.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has been telling people that his company is the only buyer that the Trump administration would accept. In a normal administration, such a statement would be wildly out of pocket—an outrageous lie about his connections to the president. But these days, Paramount can be confident in its “Trump card.”
“Who owns Warner Bros. Discovery is very important to the administration. The Warner board needs to think very seriously not just on the price competition but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done,” a senior Trump official told the New York Post.
That is just some straight-up mafia shit right there, which only makes sense since Trump is basically running a protection racket, and Paramount seems happy to play ball. It had no problem settling one of Trump’s sham lawsuits against CBS for $16 million to get approval for its merger with Skydance.
CBS News, which is owned by Paramount Skydance, then obligingly lurched to the right—putting the comically incompetent Bari Weiss in charge and canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Meanwhile, “CBS Evening News” anchor John Dickerson is leaving at the end of the year, no doubt having seen the writing on the wall when Weiss started courting Fox News’ Bret Baier for the anchor job.
Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor-in-chief
A merger between Warner Bros. and Paramount would further consolidate a media landscape that’s dominated by fewer and fewer companies. Two of the largest Hollywood studios would be under the same roof, as would CNN and CBS News and streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max.
This raises obvious antitrust concerns, but Ellison and his father, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, are pals with Trump, and those ties could certainly make those concerns disappear.
Larry is already part of the group of billionaires that’s taking over TikTok as part of an incredibly sweet deal where Trump basically just got to decide who would buy it and—surprise, surprise—just happened to pick his pals.
So if Warner Bros. and Paramount merge, the Ellison family would control a staggering amount of media.
That consolidation and control isn’t just about handing billionaire cronies tons of cash; it’s also about Trump controlling the media. He has sued multiple media outlets and extracted millions in settlements, but the biggest benefit is eliminating any negative coverage of him.
Trump has turned media mergers into both a cash grab and a way to push his agenda—making bank while steadily building the state-run media he craves.
