In his effort to win over Donald Trump’s approval as he looks to gobble up Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount chief executive David Ellison told White House officials in recent days that he would make “sweeping changes” at the cable news channel that sparks the president’s ire the most: CNN.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ellison – who launched a $108 billion hostile takeover bid of WBD after Netflix and Warner announced their deal last week – made a trip to Washington recently to assure Trump administration officials that CNN would have a new look if he bought the network’s parent company.
“Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming,” the WSJ added.
Ellison’s vow to overhaul the network that Trump has obsessively labeled “fake news” comes after the media mogul’s father, close Trump ally and megabillionaire Larry Ellison, talked with the White House about getting rid of certain CNN hosts as part of a Paramount takeover of Warner. The elder Ellison, who is the world’s second richest man, is bankrolling much of Paramount’s WBD offer.
According to The Guardian, in one phone call with the White House, Larry Ellison “engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar.”
Shortly after he unveiled his hostile takeover bid on Monday, which includes investments from Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the sovereign wealth funds of several Middle Eastern countries, the younger Ellison detailed what his vision for CNN would be under a Paramount ownership. (Netflix’s deal with Warner would see CNN spun off into a separate company.)
Speaking to CNBC’s David Faber, Ellison said that he wanted to “build a scaled news service that is basically fundamentally in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70 percent of Americans that are in the middle.”
He further declared that he would combine CNN with CBS News, which is now run by “anti-woke” former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, and the new news organization would echo the vision he’s laid out for the Weiss-led CBS.
On top of that, Ellison said he’s had “great conversations” with Trump about Paramount’s plan for its proposed CBS-CNN news business, but added that he didn’t want to speak for Trump.
While the president has repeatedly gushed over the Ellisons in recent months, especially after the politically fraught Paramount-Skydance merger that was approved by the Trump administration, his tone suddenly changed Monday following a 60 Minutes interview with his loyalist-turned-rival Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air,” Trump raged in a social media rant. “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”
Speaking to reporters Monday afternoon, the president also seemed to display some residual anger towards the Ellisons over the 60 Minutes segment when asked how involved he was going to be in approving any Warner Bros. deal.
“I know the companies very well. I know what they are doing. But I have to see… what percentage of market they have. We have to see the Netflix percentage of market, Paramount percentage of market,” he said. “I mean, none of them are particularly great friends of mine. I want to do what’s right.”
