Amid a public bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, President Donald Trump in December addressed a key asset of its media empire: CNN.
“I think the people that have run CNN for the last long period of time are a disgrace,” he said. “I think it’s imperative that CNN be sold.”
For more than a decade, Trump has railed against the cable network, making it a constant target in his attacks on mainstream news outlets that he argues are out to get him. He often calls it “Fake News CNN.”
And in the weeks since Paramount Skydance prevailed over Netflix to buy the conglomerate — placing CNN under the oversight of Paramount executive David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison, whose wealth backed the bid — Trump’s criticism has not waned.
Two weeks after Paramount won its bid, the White House issued a press release arguing that CNN was “lying” about its coverage on the war with Iran in an effort to undermine the success of the administration’s military operation. That same day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lambasted a CNN article on how the administration failed to anticipate the war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz, calling it “fake news” in a press briefing.
“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said.
The barrage from the Trump White House has taken on new meaning as Ellison’s ownership looms, raising the stakes and fueling anxiety among the network’s journalists. The younger Ellison has promised to respect the cable network’s editorial independence, but its employees worry about political interference and large cuts to personnel, since it would share a corporate overlord with CBS News should shareholders and regulators approve the deal.
Ellison and CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson have emphasized in recent weeks that the network would not be swayed by political influence.
“We stand by our journalism,” Thompson wrote in response to the attacks. “Politicians have an obvious motive for claiming that journalism which raises questions about their decisions is false. At CNN our only interest is in telling the truth to our audiences.”
“CNN is an incredible brand with an incredible team,” Ellison said in an interview with CNBC, a week after Netflix dropped its bid. “We absolutely believe in the independence that needs to be maintained, obviously, for those incredible journalists, and we want to support that going forward.”
White House senior deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in an email that the president was not trying to influence the deal.
“President Trump is not involved in the independent DoJ review process for either this or any other transaction,” Desai said. “Both he and the administration remained totally neutral throughout it.”
However, several CNN staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, expressed a degree of dread about the sale.
While White House attacks are “the same old, same old,” there’s “an added big asterisk,” one CNN staff member said, referring to the uncertainty of Ellison’s approaching ownership.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the merger, while a Defense Department spokeswoman declined to comment beyond Hegseth’s remarks.
Paramount Skydance and CBS did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Representatives for CNN and Warner Bros. declined to comment on staffers’ anxieties about the pending deal.
Despite Ellison’s assurances, questions are swirling among some staffers about how long promises of editorial independence will hold. Right now, CNN fires back when attacked, the CNN staffer said, but now “there’s the question in the back of my mind — would we be sending the same statement in eight months or whenever this closes?”
The staffer added that the pending merger has actually accelerated work inside the newsroom, with leadership pushing to get long-term digital projects across the finish line before the deal closes. “Nobody wants their creation to be another CNN+,” the staffer said, referring to a short-lived streaming service from CNN.
Some employees said they are concerned about job losses and hoping the deal takes as long as possible to close. “At the end of the day, people really care about whether they’ll have a job and be able to afford their mortgage while [David] Zaslav makes his next $800 million,” one staffer said, referring to the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO. Based on securities filings, Zaslav is expected to receive about $667 million from the deal, with potential tax reimbursements that could push the total higher.
Another CNN staffer said they were more concerned about mismanagement should a new guard — or CBS News’s current leadership — take control. Trump has praised Bari Weiss, the former New York Times opinion writer and critic of “wokeness” who Ellison installed as editor in chief of CBS News. She has clashed with the news network as she attempts to remake the organization in her first six months in charge.
“People at CNN have concerns about competence, even more so than editorial interference,” the staffer said.
Current and former CNN staffers said they trace Trump’s animus toward the network in part to Jeff Zucker, who was president of CNN Worldwide from 2013 to 2022. Zucker, as an executive at NBC in the early 2000s, green-lit Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” which debuted in 2004. But by the time Trump took political office, their relationship had soured. “Zucker failed @NBC and he is now failing @CNN,” Trump wrote in a 2016 social media post.
Since 2015, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented more than 3,500 anti-press social media posts from Trump. Hundreds of them specifically mention CNN.
The cable news network is currently run by the British-born Thompson, the former chief executive at the New York Times who took the helm in 2023 after Chris Licht’s tumultuous turn. Staffers generally expressed faith in Thompson, who has emphasized building a consumer subscription business without repeating the mistakes of CNN+ or scaling back the existing cable offering.
Thompson has signaled that he wants to stay at the helm of CNN. “As I’ve said, I’m really committed to CNN,” he told staffers in a London town hall recently. “I’m in the middle of something exciting and interesting with all of you, and I’d like to continue it.”
The United States launched attacks against Iran one day after Paramount was confirmed as the winning bidder. One CNN journalist said staffers are trying to focus on reporting.
“Everyone had 24 hours to worry about Paramount, but then all hell broke loose,” the reporter said, adding that the fact that CNN’s war reporting would be visible was “a good, reassuring thing, given the ownership question mark.”
Trump’s hostility to CNN was evident during his first presidential term, when he clashed publicly with reporters such as Jim Acosta.
One former CNN journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their current employer to comment, noted that in morning editorial meetings at the time, Zucker urged them to be tough. “Often, he would spend the first 10 to 15, maybe even 20 minutes, rallying the troops, talking about how important it was that we investigate things Trump was doing, that we not let up, that we not let things slide,” the reporter said.
Zucker did not respond to a request for comment.
Verbal attacks against journalists became common. “You weren’t covering the White House until somebody there came after you,” said another former CNN reporter. These reporters added that Trump appeared to hold particular disdain for the network.
That came to a head in 2018, when the White House temporarily suspended the press credentials of Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent at the time. The revocation followed a White House news conference in which Trump called Acosta “a rude, terrible person.” CNN sued, and a federal judge eventually ordered the White House to restore Acosta’s credentials. Acosta, who left CNN in early 2025, declined to comment for this article.
Meanwhile, Trump’s acrimonious relationship with CNN’s current chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, has only worsened throughout his second term. In December, Trump attacked her in a Truth Social post, writing: “Caitlin Collin’s of Fake News CNN, always Stupid and Nasty.”
In the Oval Office in February, Trump called Collins “the worst reporter” when she tried to ask about files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “She’s a young woman — I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” Trump said. “I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.”
In an email, a CNN spokeswoman said ““Kaitlan Collins is an exceptional journalist, reporting every day from the White House and the field with real depth and tenacity.”
On March 14, the day after the White House press release and Hegseth’s derisive comments about CNN, Trump shared a graphic on Truth Social touting a list of perceived accomplishments in “reshaping the media.”
Among them were Acosta’s departure from the network and another victory at CNN: its “new ownership.”
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