President Donald Trump commented on Skydance‘s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, completed on Tuesday, by apparently showering praised on its CEO David Ellison and his father Larry.
“It’s going to be a great company,” Trump told reporters when asked about the deal. “They’re terrific people, and it’s going to be a great company.”
Trump’s ties to the Ellisons was an ongoing point of interest in the saga of the $110 billion merger.
Some Democrats contended that the Justice Department greenlit the deal for political reasons, while warning that the Ellisons would steer CNN news coverage in a direction friendlier for the president. When Netflix and Paramount were vying for Warner Bros., Trump had said that he would be involved in the regulatory approval process, before later indicating that he would not.
Trump and the elder Ellison are longtime allies; in March, Trump put him on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology with other tech-forward execs including Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
David Ellison, meanwhile, attended the president’s State of the Union address as a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Ellison held a dinner in honor of the Trump White House and the network’s correspondents in advance of last spring’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the Skydance CEO was a guest of the recent White House State Dinner for China’s President Xi Jinping.
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On Tuesday, the first day of the new company, Ellison told a town hall that CNN would have “complete editorial independence,” and, in a conversation with Anderson Cooper, said that he would shield the network from Trump’s interference and criticism. Ellison also said that he supported CNN’s challenge of Trump’s ban on the outlet from the White House grounds.
Skydance’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by state attorneys general requires that it establish an independent review board to oversee CNN and CBS News, including establishing a set of standards and principles.
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