Battle over future of Warner Bros. Discovery captures Trump’s attention

By Kevin Liptak, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — The mounting battle to purchase one of Hollywood’s biggest prizes — Warner Bros. Discovery — has captured President Donald Trump’s attention as he sees his own interests entwined in the transaction and appears poised to try to influence its outcome.

On Sunday evening, Trump declared he’d be “involved” in the regulatory decisions on whether to allow a proposed sale of the company to Netflix, which announced a $72 billion deal to buy a large part of Warner Bros. Discovery last week. Ordinarily such decisions are kept at arm’s length from the White House.

The next morning, a rival company, Paramount, launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, citing in part a “challenging regulatory approval process” for Netflix to get its deal approved.

Trump avoided taking sides when pressed on the developments a few hours later.

“None of them are particularly great friends of mine,” Trump said from the Cabinet Room at the White House. “I want to do what’s right. It’s very important to do what’s right.”

By offering a noncommittal stance while still assuming personal responsibility for the outcome, Trump was placing himself squarely at the center of a transaction that could reshape the American moviemaking and news businesses.

Despite claiming none of the players were his friends, Trump is close with billionaire Larry Ellison, whose son, David, became the chief executive of Paramount this year through a merger with his smaller company, Skydance Media. A senior White House official said the elder Ellison and Trump had discussed the prospect of a Paramount acquisition.

In the fine print of its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paramount revealed Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is involved in the company’s takeover efforts as a financial backer through his private equity firm (Trump said Monday he’d never discussed the matter with Kushner).

White House advisers have long speculated about who would buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which is CNN’s parent company, after the company announced it was for sale earlier this fall.

White House officials have privately mused a Paramount acquisition could mean a CNN newsroom led by journalist and commentator Bari Weiss, who recently took the helm at Paramount-owned CBS, which they viewed as a favorable outcome. The president has told advisers he would support a leadership change at the cable network, which has frequently drawn his ire.

“We’ve had great conversations with the president about this,” David Ellison said when asked Monday on CNBC whether Trump embraced the idea of Paramount owning CNN. “But I think I don’t want to speak for him in any way, shape or form.”

Yet Trump’s loyalties don’t appear so clear-cut. He seemed to blur his allegiances Monday when he vented frustration at Paramount, saying it had disappointed him in its stewardship of the marquee “60 Minutes” program on CBS News.

“THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME!” the president wrote on Truth Social, referring to a $16 million settlement the former company paid this year to resolve a lawsuit Trump filed. “Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”

One source familiar with the post said Trump was merely venting that the program had given GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a platform in its Sunday show as he continues to publicly feud with her, and not expressing an opinion on Paramount’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

Meanwhile, Trump described Netflix co-chief Ted Sarandos as a “great person” after a private Oval Office chat last week. Netflix’s offer for Warner Bros. Discovery included only its studio and streaming service, not TV cable outlets like CNN, which would be housed in a new company, Discovery Global.

“He’s done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things, and he’s got a lot of interesting things happening, aside from what you’re talking about,” the president said Sunday. One source added that Trump’s praise of Sarandos extends beyond what he’s said publicly — noting that the president has privately marveled at how the executive has “turned Netflix around.”

At the same event, however, Trump expressed reservations about Netflix’s plan to buy Warner Bros., saying Sarandos “is a fantastic man and I have a lot of respect for him, but it’s a lot of market share.”

It all makes for a complex web for the rival firms to navigate as they jockey for influence. Ordinarily, antitrust decisions about major deals are made after lengthy Justice Department reviews, without explicit political interference. The senior White House official said the president seems neutral when it comes to the issue, suggesting his take changes depending on whom he’s last spoken to — and that he’s had conversations with all the parties involved.

Trump is making no secret that he’s planning to be part of the decision-making.

“They have a very big market share. And when they have Warner Bros., you know, that share goes up a lot,” Trump said as he was arriving to the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday. “So I don’t know. That’s gonna be for some economists to tell … and I’ll be involved in that decision, too.”

Larry Ellison, the founder of technology company Oracle, has a close relationship with the Trump White House, two sources told CNN, though they could not give specifics on how often he spoke with the president directly, or whether he had discussed business plans on the potential purchase with Trump. Ellison has also been a major Republican donor and hosted a fundraiser for Trump in 2020.

Those ties, combined with a belief among some of Trump’s supporters that a Paramount takeover of CNN could prove advantageous for the president, seemed to suggest to some that Paramount would find regulatory approval easier than Netflix.

Moments after the announcement last week that Netflix was planning to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, Trump allies began slamming the potential deal online, claiming it would lead to a large-scale “woke” indoctrination and linking Netflix to former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, who have a production deal with the streaming giant.

Trump, however, offered no preference when discussing the battle at the White House on Monday.

“I know the companies very well. I know what they’re doing,” he said. “But I have to see.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.