Trump DOJ Launches Bunk Investigation Of Netflix Merger As a Favor To Larry Ellison

from the “antitrust-enforcers”-in-name-only dept

We told you this was coming months ago.

The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) says it has initiated a broad investigation of Netflix’s business practices and it’s planned $82.7 billion merger with Warner Brothers. The Trump DOJ’s pretense is that they’re just suddenly really concerned about media consolidation and monopoly power (you’re to ignore the U.S. right wing’s generational and indisputable quest to coddle and protect monopoly power across telecom, energy, air travel, banking, and countless other industries):

“Questioning how Netflix competes with rivals suggests the department is looking at whether its planned Warner deal could entrench its market power, or lead to a monopoly in the future. U.S. law gives enforcers broad power to oppose mergers that could lead to a monopoly.”

In reality, the Trump administration has made it extremely clear they’re hoping to scuttle the Netflix deal to help Larry Ellison acquire Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. If they can’t kill the deal, they aspire to at least leverage the merger approval process to force Netflix executives to further debase themselves before the Trump administration, which I suspect they’ll all be happy to do.

It’s part of a longstanding trend by Trumpism to pretend that they’re engaged in populist antitrust reform, claims historically propped up by a long list of useful idiots across the partisan spectrum, and parroted by a growing coalition of right wing propaganda outlets. This bogus populism helps obfuscate what’s really just some of the worst corruption America has ever seen (which is really saying something).

The original (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report (and this aggregated Reuters recap) dutifully help sell the claim that the DOJ is also “investigating” Ellison’s Paramount/Skydance, whose Warner Brothers acquisition bid was repeatedly rejected by the Warner board over worries about dodgy financing and Saudi money involvement:

“The WSJ reported that the DOJ is also reviewing Paramount’s proposed acquisition bid, which Warner Bros’ board unanimously rejected by labeling it “inadequate” and “not in the best interests” of shareholders.”

The outlets fail to remind you that there is generous reporting discussing how Larry Ellison and Trump have had extensive meetings discussing who Larry Ellison would fire on Trump’s behalf should he take control of CNN. They also fail to remind you that the right wing “press,” with Trump’s help, has been engaged in a broad effort to undermine the Netflix merger chances using false claims.

After Warner Brothers balked at Larry’s competing bid and a hostile takeover attempt, Larry tried to sue Warner Brothers. With that not going anywhere, Larry, MAGA, and the Heritage Foundation (of Project 2025 fame) have since joined forces to try and attack the Netflix merger across right wing media, falsely claiming that “woke” Netflix is attempting a “cultural takeover” that must be stopped for the good of humanity:

More recently that included scripted questions provided by the Heritage Foundation at a Congressional hearing, where lawmakers like Republican Senator Josh Hawley resorted to bogus trans panic attacks to try and paint Netflix as some sort of vile leftist cabal.

As we keep noting, ideally a functional regulator would block all additional media consolidation, since these megadeals are consistently terrible for labor, consumers, and product quality (see: Warner Brothers entire corporate history since 2000).

That’s clearly not happening under a Trump administration that has lobotomized all key regulators. So ideally, while not great, Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is the best of a bunch of bad options. It’s arguably notably better than furthering Larry Ellison’s obvious plan to gobble up CBS, TikTok, and CNN, and turn what’s left of America’s already dodgy corporate media into Hungary-esque state television that lavishes hollow praise on our mad idiot king.

Because we’ve already let media consolidation run amok (thanks to the Trump administration’s attack on bipartisan media consolidation limits), our shitty corporate press is incapable of explaining to the public that the Trump DOJ inquiry into Netflix isn’t being conducted in good faith. It’s a perfect circle of corruption, greed, regulatory capture, and corruption that will ramp up in the weeks to come.

Filed Under: consolidation, corruption, disinformation, doj, information war, journalism, larry ellison, media, mergers, propaganda, state television

Companies: netflix, warner bros. discovery