President Donald Trump bought more than $1 million worth of corporate bonds from Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery only weeks after the media giants announced a $83 billion merger deal that could reshape Hollywood.
According to a financial disclosure form released Friday by the White House, Trump purchased bonds on Dec. 12 and 16 from Netflix and Discovery, which merged with WarnerMedia to form Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022.
Trump spent between $1 million and $2 million on the bonds, a fraction of the roughly $100 million in purchases, mostly in municipal bonds, that the president disclosed Friday.
A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details, said Trump’s investment decisions are not made by the president.
“President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” the official said. “Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”
Trump has involved himself in Netflix’s blockbuster deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery and has criticized Netflix’s market power.
“They have a very big market share,” Trump told reporters at the Kennedy Center on Dec. 7, two days after the deal was announced. “When they have Warner Bros., that share goes up a lot. So, I don’t know. That’s going to be for some economists to tell and also — and I’ll be involved in that decision too. But they have a very big market share.”
The next day, Paramount Skydance, an unsuccessful bidder in the blitz to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, launched a hostile bid to buy the company. Paramount Skydance is run by David Ellison, the son of Trump ally Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle.
A spokeswoman for Netflix declined to comment. Paramount Skydance declined to comment. Spokespeople for Warner Bros. Discovery and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.
On Jan. 11, Trump posted on Truth Social an opinion column published by One America News titled “Stop the Netflix Cultural Takeover.”
“If Netflix absorbs these assets, it will not just be the biggest streaming service,” the author wrote. “It will become the most dominant cultural gatekeeper the United States — and much of the world — has ever seen.” In recent weeks, Trump-aligned social media influencers have also urged the president to intervene to block the Netflix acquisition.
Any merger or purchases involving the companies would be subject to regulatory approval by the federal government. Trump has said he won’t give any special treatment to Ellison over Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, both of whom have met with the president. “None of them are particularly great friends of mine,” he told reporters on Dec. 9. “I want to do what’s right.”
The first bonds were purchased three days later.
The post Trump bought $1M in Netflix, Warner Bros. bonds after merger announcement appeared first on Washington Post.
