President Donald Trump wants to see changes at his least favorite news network, and a Hollywood megadeal could make those wishes come true, according to a new report.
Trump, 79, has told people in his circle that he wants to see new ownership and changes to programming at CNN, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
David Ellison, the son of billionaire Trump ally and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, told administration officials that he would make big changes to CNN if Paramount’s hostile bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery succeeds, according to the Journal.
Paramount launched a $108 billion hostile takeover bid—backed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—after it lost out to Netflix in a bidding war for Warner, which owns Hollywood studios, CNN, HBO, HGTV, and a vast movie and TV catalog.
After news broke that Netflix’s mammoth bid to take over Warner would be accepted, Larry Ellison, 81, called his friend Trump to warn that the transaction would hurt competition, insiders told the Journal.
Trump appeared to echo those concerns at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night. Asked about the potential Netflix merger, he said it would create a “big market share” and that—he warned ominously—“could be a problem.”
He did not disclose that his son-in-law had a financial stake in his friend Larry Ellison’s rival bid.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Paramount, Oracle, and the White House for comment.
The younger Ellison, 42, told CNBC on Monday that Paramount wants to finish what it started.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the relationship that I have with the president, and I also believe he believes in competition,” he said. “And when you fundamentally look at the marketplace, allowing the number one streaming service to combine with the number three streaming service is anti-competitive.”
David Ellison said that adding CNN to Paramount’s portfolio would supercharge the entertainment titan’s growth.
“We want to build a scaled, new service that is basically, fundamentally in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70 percent of Americans that are in the middle, and we believe that by doing so, that is for us, kind of doing well while doing good,” he said.
“Do you think the president embraces the idea of you being the owner of CNN, given his criticism, obviously, for that network in the past?” Squawk on the Street host David Faber asked.
“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,” Ellison responded.
Trump has raged against CNN and its criticisms of his administration since returning to office in January. Just days ago, the president took aim at host Kaitlan Collins for criticizing his new-look ballroom, and its rising costs.
“Caitlin Collin’s of Fake News CNN, always Stupid and Nasty, asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago,” he wrote in a typo-riddled Truth Social post on Saturday morning.
“FAKE NEWS CNN, and the guy who runs the whole corrupt operation that owns it, is one of the worst in the business,” he raged.
“Their ratings are so low that they’re not even counted or relevant anymore. MAGA!!!”
He attacked another female CNN journalist Natasha Bertrand in June after breaking the news of an intelligence leak surrounding the Iran strikes, calling for her to be “thrown out like a dog”.
He called the outlet “sick” that same month after a CNN report claimed he was considering an investment in an Iranian civilian non-enrichment nuclear program.
Speaking on CNN’s The Story Is With Elex Michaelson, the outlet’s media correspondent, Brian Stelter, discussed the potential changes coming for CNN.
“The main play by all these big companies is for the entertainment assets; they want the movie studio, they want the HBO streaming service, but one of the knock-on effects here is about ownership of CNN going forward, and we know President Trump is interested in that.”
When quizzed on how much influence Trump has in deciding the deal, Stelter said “he has a role” but “is not the ultimate decider.”
“While Trump can make this process more painful for whatever company is involved, he does not get an absolute veto.”
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