The official X account for Paramount Pictures, owned by Trump’s billionaire pal David Ellison, was seemingly hacked on Tuesday.
The account’s bio was changed to read “Proud arm of the fascist regime,” Variety reported. After a short time, the description was changed back to “The official X account for Paramount Pictures.”
The hack follows Monday’s news of a hostile takeover effort for Warner Bros. Discovery helmed by Ellison’s Paramount Skydance.
Paramount did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Paramount Skydance launched a $108 billion bid on Monday for full ownership of the media conglomerate, including its subsidiaries such as CNN and HBO, after losing a bidding war to Netflix.
David Ellison, 42, took over Paramount after an $8 billion merger with his company, Skydance, in August. He is the son of billionaire Oracle co-founder and close Trump ally Larry Ellison.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the elder Ellison, 81, told Trump that Netflix’s massive deal with Warner Bros. would hurt competition. Trump told reporters Sunday night at the Kennedy Center Honors that the transaction “could be a problem.”
The younger Ellison told Trump administration officials he would make changes to CNN if the takeover succeeds.
“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,” Ellison told CNBC on Monday.
Ellison is reportedly leveraging connections with sovereign wealth funds in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi to bolster the takeover bid. However, their funding support is not enough to warrant investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is also a significant financial backer in Paramount’s hostile takeover bid through his firm, Affinity Partners.
Paramount Skydance’s restructuring of CBS News since its acquisition has seen the installment of conservative opinion editor Bari Weiss as the news broadcaster’s editor-in-chief—a decision that has platformed more Trump-friendly voices on the network.
Weiss is set to interview Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, on the platform in a “town hall” in New York on Saturday.
Trump’s wish to see a reboot of the long-defunct Rush Hour franchise was also granted by his friends at Paramount, tying the project to controversial director Brett Ratner.
Ratner, who denies accusations of sexual misconduct made by multiple women, is a friend of the Trump family and directed a documentary about first lady Melania Trump released to Amazon Prime Video.
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