{"id":438980,"date":"2025-12-11T01:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/438980\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T01:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:05:10","slug":"exclusive-trump-says-he-wants-a-new-owner-for-cnn-as-part-of-any-sale-of-warner-bros-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/438980\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive | Trump says he wants a new owner for CNN as part of any sale of Warner Bros. Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump said he wants a new owner for CNN as part of any sale of its parent Warner Bros. Discovery \u2013 a signal that he prefers an offer by Paramount Skydance to purchase the media conglomerate versus last week\u2019s winning bid from Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Streaming giant Netflix has agreed to buy WBD\u2019s Warner Bros. studio and its HBO Max streaming service, leaving CNN\u2019s current management intact. But Paramount Skydance wants to buy all of WBD including CNN \u2013 and put the latter under the news chief of its CBS subsidiary, Bari Weiss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the latest in a string of extraordinary declarations in the history of US regulation, Trump signaled he is directly inserting himself into a review of the WBD sale, telling reporters outright on Wednesday afternoon that it\u2019s imperative for CNN to be under completely new management.\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Trump signaled he is directly inserting himself into a review of the WBD sale. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cI think any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately, but I don\u2019t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don\u2019t think that should be allowed to continue,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

Insiders say Trump\u2019s comments come as Paramount Skydance\u2019s owners, David Ellison and his father Larry, have been scrambling to do damage control with the White House over an explosive \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/a> in which the MAGA apostate slammed the president<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

The sources say Paramount\u2019s brass insists that \u201c60 Minutes\u201d staffers kept them mostly in the dark about the controversial interview that aired Sunday night \u2013 which provoked Trump to declare that Paramount Skydance and its management \u201cARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!\u201d Trump added of the Ellisons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Insiders say Trump\u2019s comments come as Paramount Skydance\u2019s owners, David Ellison (above) and his father Larry, have been scrambling to do damage control with the White House. REUTERS<\/p>\n

In addition to ripping \u201cMarjorie Traitor Greene,\u201d the president called \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Leslie Stahl a \u201cTrump hating, 60 Minutes \u2018correspondent,\u201d Trump added:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy real problem with the show, however, wasn\u2019t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air,\u201d the president added.<\/p>\n

Sources say Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has told people close to Trump he was unaware of the broadcast until the day it ran, as was Jeff Shell, president of Paramount Skydance, and Weiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re saying those guys went rogue and when Paramount Skydance found out about it, they were caught flatfooted,\u201d said one person with direct knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately,\u201d President Trump said Wednesday. AP<\/p>\n

A Paramount Skydance spokeswoman referred all questions to CBS Rep Chris Ender who both declined comment and would not deny the substance of this account.<\/p>\n

All of which underscores the difficulty in running a news operation \u2013 or any highly regulated business \u2013 in the era of Trump, who has insert himself into major corporate finance deals in ways that are unprecedented. Trump\u2019s comments about CNN, media industry insiders say, shows he\u2019s looking to exert maximum pressure to mold the deal to fit his political goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the Post has previously reported, Trump wants CNN\u2019s alleged anti-MAGA bias \u201cneutralized\u201d<\/a> and that was one reason he was siding with the Ellisons in the deal contest.<\/p>\n

Indeed, part of Paramount\u2019s sales pitch to the WBD shareholders to ditch the Netflix bid is \u201cregulatory certainty\u201d from the Trump White House. It argues that it has less antitrust overlap with WBD than Netflix. Another selling point is that Larry Ellison has been a long-time MAGA supporter.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a \u201chostile bid\u201d to undo Warner Bros Discovery\u2019s decision last week to select Netflix, arguing its $30 a share all cash offer is superior to Netflix\u2019s cash-stock offer of $30,75. Netflix is bidding on just buying the Warner Studio and streaming service, and counts as part of its bid an eventual spinoff of WBD\u2019s cable properties like Discovery and CNN.<\/p>\n

Aside from the tricky Trumpy politics, money will be a key variable in the deal. As The Post first reported, both Paramount Skydance and Netflix are poised to mount a bidding war<\/a> for the media company that could take the winning price to $35 a share or $91 billion. Before WBD began shopping itself, it had a market value of around $31 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump said he wants a new owner for CNN as part of any sale of its parent…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":438981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[15327,64,32129,69,171,9701,398,14548,15329,80,173,67,132,68,27281],"class_list":{"0":"post-438980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-60-minutes","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-david-ellison","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-marjorie-taylor-greene","14":"tag-media","15":"tag-on-the-money","16":"tag-paramount","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-tv","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115698252626804896","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}