Netflix and Paramount Will Fight for Trump's Favor

Which is what progressive fans of antitrust want, no?

Netflix has moved to acquire Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion, a massive media deal that would bring the film studio's iconic intellectual property—everything from Harry Potter to Tony Soprano—under the auspices of the streaming giant.

But not so fast! Paramount Skydance has launched a hostile takeover bid and is trying to persuade Warner Bros. shareholders that they would be better off throwing in with Paramount owner David Ellison, who is the son of Larry Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump. The two deals are slightly different; under the terms of the Netflix deal, CNN would be spun off separately, whereas Paramount Skydance would also acquire CNN as part of its deal. This would mean that CNN would be part of the same media company as CBS News, which is now run by the right-of-center journalist, Bari Weiss. In other words, the Paramount deal could in theory be more appealing to the Trump administration, though Trump has thus far had relatively nice things to say about Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos as well.

Trump would definitely like to be involved in the decision, however—and thus, Netflix and Paramount Skydance have every incentive to curry favor with the president and flatter his vanity. This could influence editorial decisions at the relevant media properties, since no one wants to risk offending a president with the power to blow up the deal. Undoubtedly, executives at Paramount Skydance were sweating last weekend after Trump penned a Truth Social post blasting CBS' new management for failing to swiftly rein in 60 Minutes, which committed the unpardonable sin of interviewing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), a MAGA loyalist turned Trump archenemy. "THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP," fumed Trump, referring to his friends at Paramount.

This seems likely to get very ugly, from a free speech perspective. Media companies should feel unconstrained to criticize government leaders, but some of the most powerful business leaders in the country will clearly be competing to outdo each other in terms of obsequiousness toward Trump.

But if you have a problem with this—and to be clear, most people ought to be offended by it—then you should object to the federal government exercising so much power over market actors in the first place. This entire situation, in which flattering Trump is the end goal of Netflix and Paramount, exists because the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have the power to block corporate mergers and acquisitions. Progressive proponents of robust antitrust enforcement, which involves limiting the size and scale of major companies, are living in a reality that follows naturally from their own principles.

They won't see it that way, of course. Progressives like to imagine that the government would scrutinize mergers in an objective manner, considering the potential merits from a neutral standpoint.

I feel like merger review should be governed by some effort at an objective standard (perhaps welfare to consumers) rather than treated as a pure political football. https://t.co/wIoZO5aFeu

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 9, 2025

But of course, progressive crusades against private businesses are often political in nature. Democrats frequently probe the decisions of private media companies and threaten regulatory action for noncompliance with a specific political agenda. What distinguishes Trump is the brazen and transactional nature of his pressure campaigns. Yet the solution is simple: greatly limit the power of federal antitrust regulators, or scrap these offices completely. If Sarandos, Ellison, and any other media titan could safely ignore Trump's demands for special deference, then free speech rights of these companies would be much better protected.

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