President Donald Trump is quietly infuriated by the new obstacle to a pro-MAGA media merger he thought was a done deal, veteran journalist and “Status” founder Oliver Darcy told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on Monday’s edition of “Deadline: White House.”
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Specifically, after the Trump Justice Department approved a controversial merger between Paramount-Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that would not just consolidate an already barely competitive media market but put CNN under the control of a Trump-friendly executive who has already reshaped CBS, a team of states led by California is suing to block the deal.
This throws a monkey wrench in the whole process, Darcy explained.
“Tell me what you understand to be the state of play here with this lawsuit,” said Wallace. “Is it a real threat to the merger?”
“Oh, definitely. I think this is a big, big, big problem for David Ellison and Paramount,” said Darcy. The president, he added, is “surely watching this and probably not too happy tonight because he very much wants CNN to be in David Ellison’s hands.”
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This was made clear, Darcy added, by Trump telling Jake Tapper yesterday that “we are trying to have CNN go on a normal path” — by which he was clearly implying that he and Ellison were controlling its content.
“And so the states suing today and basically doing the job that the Department of Justice refused to do when they greenlit this deal, apparently over the concerns of some career prosecutors who wanted to challenge it — I think it’s a big problem … for Paramount and for Donald Trump, who really wants CNN to be in the control of an ally’s hands.”
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