\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
The president isn\u2019t picking sides in the battle to own Warner Bros. Discovery\u2014at least not yet. On Friday, the company announced that Netflix would acquire it for $83 billion. A day later, Paramount Skydance launched a roughly $108 billion hostile-takeover bid, backed in part by Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner. But when Trump was asked on Monday for his take on the media showdown, he was noncommittal: \u201cNone of them are particularly great friends of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not for lack of trying. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos made a play for the president\u2019s favor last month, visiting the White House to discuss Warner Bros.\u2019 prospects. Before then, the leading candidate to purchase the media giant was Paramount Skydance. Its CEO, David Ellison, is the son of the software centibillionaire Larry Ellison\u2014a key Trump ally\u2014and has teased sweeping changes to CNN (owned by Warner Bros.) if his company succeeds in its takeover. Paramount Skydance\u2019s chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim, handled antitrust law for the Justice Department during Trump\u2019s first term. The Ellisons\u2019 relationship with the president is close enough that when Trump reportedly asked Larry to green-light Rush Hour 4\u2014almost 20 years after Rush Hour 3 came out\u2014Paramount Skydance made it happen.<\/p>\n
The Netflix-Warner Bros. deal will likely spend more than a year in regulatory review. Presidents can\u2019t unilaterally decide who buys or sells a company, but that reality has so far been less important than the perception that Trump might be able to sway the outcome. Asked on Sunday whether the mammoth transaction would meet the bar for regulatory approval, Trump said, \u201cI\u2019ll be involved in that decision.\u201d Craig Aaron, the president of the media watchdog Free Press, told me that when it comes to corporate mergers, he\u2019s never before seen \u201cpersonality-based wooing\u201d of any president on this scale: \u201cHe\u2019s saying, Impress me\u2014nobody\u2019s my friend yet, but they could be.\u201d Much of the analysis from Wall Street, Aaron said, comes down to \u201cWho does Trump like best? It\u2019s an almost unfathomable way of doing business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mega-businesses structure their mega-deals in a way that\u2019s consistent with existing regulations rather than with a president\u2019s particular whims. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission vet most telecommunications deals independently of the president\u2014but their influence has limits. Trump learned that lesson during his first term, when his Justice Department sought to stop AT&T and DirecTV\u2019s 2017 purchase of Time Warner. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump had gone on record opposing the deal, claiming that it consolidated too much power in too few hands (his feud with CNN, then owned by Time Warner, may have had something to do with it too). But even with Trump\u2019s explicit backing, the Justice Department couldn\u2019t stop the merger; in 2019, a federal appeals judge ruled that the deal could stand.<\/p>\n
Things are different this time around. Paramount and Skydance completed their merger in August under the watchful eyes of Trump-appointed regulators. As part of an effort to get the deal over the line, the companies agreed to certain mandates set by the Federal Communications Commission: dismantle DEI programs and install an ombudsman to oversee the ideological bias of the company\u2019s content. Because Netflix isn\u2019t looking to buy any of the Warner Bros. cable networks, the FCC won\u2019t be involved in the approval process\u2014but the Justice Department and the FTC could still attach all sorts of strings to the deal. The traditional regulatory split, wherein the regulators, not the president, review the deal, remains intact. But the ongoing hollowing out of the Justice Department may end up supercharging Trump\u2019s influence: Many of the \u201cnormative restrictions around the president using the department as a weapon\u201d have been eroded during Trump\u2019s second term, according to my colleague Quinta Jurecic.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also the question of Trump\u2019s broader interest in antitrust enforcement. During the Biden administration, the DOJ and the FTC instituted new Merger Guidelines that increased federal scrutiny of major deals; for now, those rules remain in place. Trump has fretted in the past about consolidation, but the broad MAGA coalition includes both populist trustbusters and unabashedly pro-corporate figures. His promise to \u201cbe involved\u201d with the deal\u2019s approval process could cut both ways.<\/p>\n
As of now, no company has fully earned Trump\u2019s loyalty. At the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, David Ellison sat with him in the presidential box. The following morning, Trump castigated Paramount Skydance for allowing an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene to air on 60 Minutes. By making a show of his indecision, the president is inviting a battle for his affections\u2014but staying friends with Trump can be its own challenge.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Michael Paulsen \/ Houston Chronicle \/ Getty.<\/p>\n The Most Impractical Tool in My Kitchen<\/p>\n By Tyler Austin Harper<\/p>\n My relationship with carbon-steel knives began with a lie. When I was in graduate school a few years ago, I walked into a schmancy New York City knife shop, determined to buy a lithe 210-millimeter Suisin Gyuto. But the clerk didn\u2019t want to sell it to me. The poor man had quite evidently been traumatized by prior customers who had bought (and presumably returned) high-maintenance knives that they were not prepared to take care of. He seemed desperate to get me to buy a stainless-steel one instead.<\/p>\n But no, I wanted that knife. I had landed on it after countless hours poring over Reddit threads when I should have been writing my master\u2019s thesis. \u201cIt will be a lot of work!\u201d the salesman said. Then: \u201cIt will rust!\u201d And: \u201cIt must be hand washed!\u201d And: \u201cCan I show you these knives over here?\u201d His pleas became more and more plaintive until, eager to end both of our miseries, I exclaimed: \u201cIt\u2019s a Christmas gift for a friend! He has other carbon-steel knives already!\u201d The lie, at last, appeased him. Minutes later I was out in the cold, clutching my shopping bag, inside it my tall, thin \u201cgift\u201d wrapped in gold paper.<\/p>\n The salesman was, of course, right.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Illustration by Anna Ruch \/ The Atlantic. Sources: ATR \/ Historic Collection \/ Alamy<\/p>\n Read. Googoosh\u2019s love songs are both banned and beloved in her homeland, Arash Azizi writes. Her new memoir reveals a life as rich and painful as Iran\u2019s history.<\/p>\n Watch. Mad Men\u2019s messy HBO Max debut reveals the quirks of ushering old shows into a new era, David Sims writes.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The president isn\u2019t picking sides in the battle to own Warner Bros. Discovery\u2014at least not yet. On Friday, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[11558,2036,2171,71,2035],"class_list":{"0":"post-36836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-backing","9":"tag-bros","10":"tag-fight","11":"tag-trumps","12":"tag-warner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n