President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly celebrated the wealthy Ellison family’s growing media empire in recent days, even as the Trump administration is reviewing Paramount Skydance’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery and its assets including CNN for $110 billion.
“The Ellison family, two great people, great people. It’s a great family,” Trump said Monday, in remarks ahead of a Kennedy Center board meeting that referenced CBS and its upcoming broadcast of a UFC event.
On Friday, Hegseth called Warner Bros.-owned CNN’s coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran “fake news” after it reported that the administration had underestimated the risk of disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said. A spokeswoman for CNN declined to comment on his remarks.
CNN, a longtime target of Trump’s complaints about the media, is among the most prominent assets in Paramount’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros., which requires approval from the Justice Department.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle and a longtime friend and ally to Trump, has financially backstopped Paramount’s pending deal to buy Warner Bros. and is also a major investor in the White House-blessed deal that spun off TikTok into a U.S. company. That has helped rebrand the tech billionaire and his son David into media tycoons — with some help from Trump.
The administration’s posture toward Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has drawn scrutiny since a bidding war erupted over the troubled media giant late last year.
After Netflix announced an $83 billion deal in December to buy most of Warner Bros. Discovery and spin off CNN and other cable properties, Trump told reporters he would be “involved” in deciding whether to approve it, citing the streaming giant’s market power as a potential concern.
Days later, Paramount launched a hostile bid for the entire company, including CNN, backed by a personal guarantee of more than $40 billion from Larry Ellison. Netflix ultimately withdrew its offer last month after Paramount increased its bid, allowing it to strike a deal to merge with Warner Bros. The merger could reshape Hollywood and the news industry by placing two major Hollywood studios (Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures), two major streaming services (HBO Max and Paramount+), and two major news brands (CBS News and CNN) under one roof.
William Baer, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief under President Barack Obama, said the Trump administration appears to be seeking to influence a process that should be grounded in economics and consumer protection.
“Antitrust merger review is supposed to be about what benefits competition and consumers,” Baer said. “This administration is saying the quiet part out loud: We will put our thumb on the scale, regardless of the merits, to benefit our friends and punish our enemies without regard to the law.”
Daniel Crane, who teaches antitrust law at University of Michigan Law School, said Trump has bucked a half-century of precedent by involving himself in Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission antitrust reviews of mergers.
“Despite a bipartisan post-Watergate consensus that the agencies should be insulated from political interference, Trump has made it very clear that he views antitrust decisions as his to make,” Crane said.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump’s friendship with the Ellisons is above board. “President Trump has on multiple occasions expressed how he has a great friendship with the Ellison family — a personal relationship that in no way affects administration policymaking,” Desai said. “The only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
A spokesman for the Defense Department declined to answer questions about why Hegseth seemed to endorse a deal still pending regulatory approval.
The Justice Department confirmed that the review is being conducted by its antitrust division, but declined to answer questions about the president’s involvement or whether the department agreed with Hegseth’s statement of support for David Ellison.
A Paramount Skydance spokeswoman declined to comment.
Trump’s fresh praise for the Ellisons comes after the president has spent weeks insulting the press over their coverage of the Iran war. On Sunday, Trump alleged without evidence in a Truth Social post that news organizations were running AI-generated Iranian propaganda and should be charged with “TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” He also endorsed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the licenses of broadcasters whose coverage the agency deems to be “fake news.”
While the Ellisons are allies of Trump, he hasn’t always been rosy about them.
During Netflix’s battle with Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. — before Paramount prevailed — Trump said that “none of them are particularly great friends of mine” in December when asked about both the Ellisons and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos.
Trump also blasted CBS’s “60 Minutes” in December and said the new ownership is “no better than the old.” The younger Ellison’s Skydance took over Paramount in an $8 billion deal last summer after a lengthy review by the FCC and numerous concessions, including eliminating diversity initiatives and installing a CBS News ombudsman with Republican Party ties.
The post The Ellisons are building a media empire. Trump keeps cheering them on. appeared first on Washington Post.
