President Donald Trump has signaled some opposition to Netflix purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery, saying that CNN should be sold as part of the package deal.
Trump made his position on the deal known during a meeting with business leaders at the White House on Wednesday.
“I think any deal should — it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately,” Trump said. “I don’t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don’t think that should be allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along with everything else.”
As Breitbart News previously reported, Paramount Skydance has expressed desire to purchase CNN, viewing it as a viable business. According to the New York Post, Larry Ellison and CEO David Ellison have an eye on CNN with an aim to buy the studio’s cable-news subsidiary.
“They see CNN, warts and all, as a very profitable business worth saving,” noted the Post. “Trump, meanwhile, desperately wants CNN — whose correspondents regularly spar with him at the White House and on Air Force One — ‘neutralized’ out of its anti-MAGA coverage, one top broadcast executive recently told.”
“And in his thinking, Larry Ellison, the billionaire Trump donor who is co-founder of software giant Oracle, is the perfect vehicle to set CNN straight,” it added. “Specifically, Trump wants the Ellisons to do to CNN what they are doing with their CBS subsidiary after hiring Bari Weiss, the right-of-center columnist who is under orders to squeeze left-wing bias out of its news programming.”
Bari Weiss could potentially include CNN as being part of her editorial oversight should Paramount Skydance win the bidding war.
“The Ellisons will get the white-glove treatment and an easy 6 months before approval,” one telecom lawyer told the Post.
“Brian Roberts [Comcast] gets a proctology exam that could last two years. Same with Netflix. The Warner board might just say it’s not worth the wait,” the lawyer added.
Insider reports say that the Ellisons actually view CNN as a viable business model due to its global reach with reporters and correspondents in nearly every country. Despite its issues in the current marketplace, it still makes $500 million in yearly profits.
Trump, however, has said he will not pick sides in the bidding war.
“I know the companies very well. I know what they are doing. But I have to see. I have to see what percentage of market [share] they have. We have to see the Netflix percentage of market [share], Paramount percentage of market [share]. I mean, none of them are particularly great friends of mine. You know, I want to do what’s right. It’s so very important to do what’s right,” the president told reporters on Monday.
He has also signaled his willingness to hear Netflix’s side of the argument while cautioning the streaming giant could face regulatory trouble.
Speaking with reporters on the red carpet of the Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington, D.C., Trump confirmed that he met with Ted Sarandos ahead of Netflix’s negotiations with Warner Bros. Discovery, adding that the deal “could be a problem” due to potential antitrust legal challenges.
“I’ll be involved in that decision,” the president said, adding that Netflix’s proposed $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. will “go through a process” to “see what happens.”
The president also had kind words for Ted Sarandos, calling the co-CEO of Netflix “fantastic man.”
“I have a lot of respect for him, but it’s a lot of market share,” Trump said. “He’s a great person… He’s got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you’re talking about, but it is a big market share. There’s no question about it. It could be a problem.”
Sarandos told investors on a call with Wall Street analysts last Friday that he believes the deal with Warner Bros. Discovery will close in 12-18 months.
“[We are] really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need,” Sarandos told analysts. “This deal is pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, it’s pro-creator, it’s pro-growth.”
According to Variety, Sarandos conveyed to President Trump during their meeting that “even combined with Warner Bros. and HBO Max, Netflix would grow to be about as big as Google’s YouTube in the U.S. — and would still have less TV market share than other media conglomerates, according to a Bloomberg report.”
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