Trump’s right wing billionaire friend Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son, David) recently acquired CBS and likely co-ownership of TikTok. Like Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the goal isn’t really subtle: rich, thin-skinned right wingers want to own the entirety of U.S. new and old media, then convert it into a giant propaganda and lazy infotainment bullhorn that blows smoke up their asses.
The Ellisons have since set their sights on Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. It won’t be cheap; it’s estimated that Larry and company will have to pay upwards of $60 billion for the acquisition. The Trump administration has openly signaled that they’d very much like the Ellisons to succeed here, in part to force a dying cable news channel (CNN) to be even friendlier to Trump than it already is.
While Ellison has some competing suitors with names like Comcast NBC Universal and Netflix, the winning bidder will need approval from the Trump DOJ and FCC. Knowing that they likely have a distinct tactical advantage via corruption, Ellison and Trump appear to be already measuring the drapes, discussing programming changes (and CNN hirings and firings) that will please the president:
“Ellison often speaks to connections at the White House and in at least one phone call 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, the people said.”
You might recall that during the first Trump administration, Trump tried very hard to offload Time Warner (and CNN) to Rupert Murdoch, who worked behind the scenes to scuttle the AT&T Time Warner deal. Trump has repeatedly filed unsuccessful lawsuits against CNN trying to silence critical voices at the network. With those gambits having failed, buying and destroying CNN from the inside is the next step.
The great irony is these networks that offend Trump weren’t exactly what you’d call bastions of hard-nosed journalism to begin with. Under the ownership of Trump fan David Zaslav, CNN is already know for flinging softball questions at Trump authoritarians, failing to challenge obvious lies on air, and generally airing a sort of safe, infotainment-centered pseudo-journalism.
But even that’s too much critical thinking for America’s thinnest skinned billionaires.
Ellison is already hard at work turning whatever was left of CNN into a right wing propaganda mill. If he acquires ownership of TikTok and CNN as well; the potential exists to create a propaganda empire that’s arguably larger and much worse than Fox News.
But given the recent failures of efforts to dominate U.S. media through consolidation (again, see AT&T) it’s also equally likely that this weird assortment of trolls and nepobabies simply creates a mountain of unsustainable debt and hubris crushed by the weight of its own incompetent ambition.
