U.S. President Donald Trump during the FIFA World Cup 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey on July 19, 2026. REUTERS/Lee Smith
MAGA Republicans and the Trump administration suffered a major setback when, on Monday, July 20, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín blocked a Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger that, opponents of the deal say, would put President Donald Trump's allies in charge of CNN. The federal judge issued a 14-day restraining order, which liberal economist Paul Krugman is applauding as a positive development.
Martínez-Olguín's restraining order doesn't kill the Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger altogether, but it does block it for two weeks.
"Good news: The second richest man in America might be prevented from taking over CNN," Krugman argues in a July 22 video for his Substack page. "That's the good news. The bad news is, aside from the fact that he probably will manage to pull it off anyway…. that that would be only a small piece of the ongoing takeover of U.S. media by oligarchs. And in turn, the media takeover is just part of the extraordinary exercise of power by the extraordinarily wealthy small number of men who have been wreaking so much havoc with America as we know it."
Opponents of the Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger fear that if it goes through, CNN will end up mirroring right-wing cable news outlets like Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN) — all of which are known for their favorable coverage of Trump. Paramount's Larry Ellison is a major Trump supporter, and Warner Bros. Discovery is CNN's parent company.
The Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger, Krugman warns, would accelerate MAGA's "takeover of the media."
"So, OK, (Larry) Ellison, or the Ellison family — because nominally, this is Ellison's son, (David Ellison), in charge of Paramount — has already acquired CBS and has hired Bari Weiss to basically corrupt and destroy that network," Krugman laments. "If the deal for takeover of Warner proceeds, then CNN will get the same treatment. I'm finding CNN a very good news source, just braver at taking on what's really happening than my old employer, the New York Times — which is a great news organization and may be more necessary than ever, but tends to be cautious. And CNN is a little bit less cautious."
Krugman continues, "But anyway, if he gets away with it, then CNN as we know it will almost disappear. It will almost turn into Fox News. Now, that won't be a profitable venture. There's already a Fox News, and so, creating another one is not going to actually produce a lot of profits, if any. But that's not the objective. This is buying influence."