A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. The saga of Olivia Nuzzi consuming the polimedia-sphere has prompted me to […]
President Donald Trump says he will be personally involved in the potential sale of Warner Bros. Discovery, with two enormous buyout offers on the table that risk further exacerbating U.S. media concentration. Netflix announced an $83 billion deal last week to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which would give the tech giant control of the Warner Bros. movie studio and rival streaming service HBO Max. Paramount Skydance then launched a hostile takeover bid worth $108 billion that would create a Hollywood behemoth and bring CBS News and CNN under the same roof, in addition to a host of other media properties. Paramount Skydance is controlled by the pro-Trump billionaires Larry Ellison and his son David; the takeover offer is also backed financially by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. Media critics and anti-monopoly advocates have warned that both offers for Warner Bros. should be rejected by federal regulators, though the Trump administration has largely ended aggressive antitrust enforcement.
“We have these giant companies trying to take control of even more of what we watch, see, hear and read every day,” says Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action, two media reform organizations. He calls the media giants’ efforts to woo Trump “a Mafia-type situation” and warns that previous media mega-mergers have been “disastrous” for workers, consumers and the businesses themselves.
The pro-Trump Ellison family launches a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, Jasmine Crockett sends Texas Dems into a tailspin, and did 'Alligator Alcatraz' use CIA torture methods on migrants!?
I am used to debunking absurd right-wing arguments. But conservative podcaster and author Candace Owens is on another level entirely. Many of her proclamations are so bizarre, they seem better described as “symptoms” than “ideas.” She has said that the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz are performing a“satanic ritual” when they celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch. She says Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Emmanuel Macron are all gay. (And that this is “not a coincidence.”) She has cast doubt on the crimes of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, saying his ghoulish experiments sound “absurd” and would have been a “waste of time and supplies.” Naturally, she believes we faked the moon landing (in fact, all of our space programs were both “fake and gay”). She now claims that the French Foreign Legion were involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk, possibly at the direction of Brigitte Macron (whom Owens thinks is transgender), and believes she herself is being pursued by assassins dispatched by the French government.