U.S. President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 12, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The Trump Administration has been reviewing Paramount Skydance's proposal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, whose assets include CNN, for $110 billion. Radar Online's Beth Shilliday, in late February, reported that CNN staffers are filled with "dread" at the prospect of Paramount Skydance's David Ellison, a Republican billionaire, as their new boss.
Now, according to Washington Post reporter Scott Nover, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are publicly applauding the deal and making it clear that hope to see David Ellison and his father Larry Ellinson running CNN.
Trump, on Monday, March 16, before a Kennedy Center board meeting in Washington, D.C., commented, "The Ellison family, two great people, great people. It's a great family." And Hegseth said, "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better."
"CNN, a longtime target of Trump's complaints about the media, is among the most prominent assets in Paramount'spending acquisition of Warner Bros., which requires approval from the Justice Department," Nover reports. "Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle and a longtime friend and ally to Trump, has financially backstopped Paramount's pending deal to buy Warner Bros. and is also a major investor in the White House-blessed deal that spun off TikTok into a U.S. company. That has helped rebrand the tech billionaire and his son David into media tycoons — with some help from Trump."
Nover adds, "The (Trump) administration's posture toward Paramount's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has drawn scrutiny since a bidding war erupted over the troubled media giant late last year."
In a March 17 post on X, formerly Twitter, Nover highlighted his article and noted, "Trump and Hegseth are praising the Ellison family even as the administration reviews Paramount's $110 [billion] bid to buy Warner Bros."
William Baer, who served as antitrust chief at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under former President Barack Obama, is highly critical of Trump's interference in the proposed merger.
Baer told the Post, "Antitrust merger review is supposed to be about what benefits competition and consumers. This administration is saying the quiet part out loud: We will put our thumb on the scale, regardless of the merits, to benefit our friends and punish our enemies without regard to the law."