1096: Trump Joins the Streaming Wars

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25:57Monday also brought more exciting news in the war over which mega corporation will achieve total control of the entertainment industry. Hell yeah. You probably saw that Netflix has, at least for now, won the bidding war for Warner Brothers Discovery, agreeing to pay$72 billion in a deal that would give them the Warner Brothers half of the company, which includes the TV and movie studios as well as HBO Max. The Discovery half, which includes CNN and other cable networks, would split off on its own, though they could always go after that half later. But none of this is final. On Monday, David Ellison's Paramount Skydance, which recently absorbed what's left of CBS and CBS News, was reportedly preparing to launch a hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery.

26:39Ellison, whose father Larry is the billionaire founder of Oracle and friends with Trump, called the Netflix offer, quote, inferior and told CNBC on Monday, quote, we're really here to finish what we started. Love it. People are going to hear your interview with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw. on this in a bit, but any headlines from that that we should know about? Hollywood is pretty freaked out. The Ellsons are pissed, but could put together more money, and Trump has a lot of power. And Paramount is bringing some pals along if they go forward with the latest bid. They're making the offer along with sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and of course, no gang of Gulf autocrats trying to curry favor with Trump would be complete without the involvement of the man who was the president's second choice to marry Ivanka after Tom Brady, Jared Kushner.

27:27He's like a chaperone. Jared's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, going in on the bid could help grease the wheels with regulators, especially because the Trump administration has already indicated it views the Netflix offer with, quote, heavy skepticism. But because Trump is also a messy bitch who loves drama, he posted a statement on Monday that was quite critical of Paramount for allowing CBS News' 60 Minutes to air an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene in which she dared to criticize Trump. Quote from the truth. My real problem was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air.

28:00All caps, 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. Tough review for Barry Weiss. I wonder if there's a lesson there for anybody else. And here's Trump fielding a question on the deal. during his White House event on Monday. You spoke about Netflix last night, saying you have concerns about them. I know the company's very well. I know what they're doing. But I have to see. I have to see what percentage of market they have. I mean, none of them are particularly great friends of mine.

28:33Paramount is supported by Jared Kushner, Mr. President. Would that impact your decision? Paramount is? I don't know. I've never spoken to him. He's really tried to work on Gaza. I think Gaza is his primary thing. Tommy, do you think this deal is this hostile takeover bid could work now that the man who negotiated the Abraham Accords is on the case? Yeah. First of all, way to bribe him there, CBS. You guys nailed that. Also, the lighting there was so bad. Very, very gold. Yellowy, very amber. Golden dome. I mean, Jared's participation is pure, uncut corruption. Like the Paramount is just like, okay, let's bring this idiot.

29:11Maybe he can grease it from the inside. Maybe he can make this deal happen. And remember that the money Jared is investing is almost entirely from investment funds controlled by the Saudis, the Emiratis and Qatar. It's 99 % of the like 5 billion in assets yet. So he is a middleman with zero experience in like streaming or studios. It's just political ties and corruption. And, you know, you have to ask like, OK, at the same time. So the Saudi Emirati and Qatari sovereign wealth funds have put up 24 billion to help finance this deal. So those sovereign wealth funds paid Jared. So they're paying him a fee to be part of an investment that they're also a part of on their own.

29:51Very interesting. Nice work if you can get it. Great business. Also, the sovereign wealth funds have agreed to have no say in the governance of the future companies. So no board seats, no voting rights, presumably to get around the national security process that could block the deal, the CFIUS process. So you have to wonder, like, why are these guys excited to be part of a deal that this merger where they're wildly overpaying for assets to create a company they can't control? And like, I think it's about control, right? It's like changing the cultural conversation. I think they just love journalism.

30:22Yeah, they love cinema. It's about, you know, like washing their reputation. I mean, the whole thing is just pretty gross. Yeah. So we don't even I talked to Lucas about this a little bit. And actually, we don't totally understand their motivation, right? Because they do claim to be giving up control. They do like the idea of diversifying into these other areas at the same time. Because this is such a big Netflix, there's so many pieces to this. CNN is at stake in this as well. Netflix has said they don't want the cable business. So that Discovery Global would spin off. Elson has said he would want it.

30:58He would keep it and would make CNN and CBS a kind of Barry Weiss Gundam that she would control, probably. Now, I asked actually Lucas about this, about would Ellison acquire CNN anyway if Netflix spun it off? And he actually thought he might, but didn't actually think that anybody that that that the cable business is something you get if you do this deal. But nobody would want it independently, which may be a possibility. It does seem like, first of all, we should talk about the power Trump has to stop this deal, because it's not as clear cut as I thought, at least, when I first started reading about it.

31:37Because, first of all, the FCC has no role here because there's not local television stations at stake. DoJ. And so it's DOJ. DOJ could ask a judge for an injunction. So they could maybe delay it for a couple months, but then the judge would have to grant the injunction. So they can try to block it, but it's not completely in the hands of Trump's DOJ. I do think he is playing coy and like, you know, maybe it's a maybe it's too much market share for Netflix. But also Ted Sarandos is fantastic. And also I might be pissed at Paramount because 60 Minutes and Barry Weiss aren't. Yeah, it's leverage.

32:12And if this takes 18 months to close, you know, that's like a good part of the rest of Trump's term. and he can have all three of these companies just kissing his ass and giving him all the content, all the Rush Hour movies he wants. He's already got Rush Hour 4 coming out now. He's got another cameo in a Batman movie coming his way. But not enough. Home Alone. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, so he doesn't have the ability to, he doesn't have the singular ability to stop it, but he does have the ability to approve it. I do think also all this, him sort of going after Paramount today is a way of saying for the next 18 months, everybody better be so nice to me.

32:51It's my birthday. It's my birthday until one of these deals is approved. Yeah, I talked about this with Lucas as well. I've seen a bunch of people come out against these deals and I understand why and people have genuine concerns about what this consolidation would mean. But I also do wonder what happens if people come up with what they'd want Trump. Trump claims he wants to save Hollywood, right? He comes, I'm going to be the guy that saves Hollywood. Well, if Trump wants to be the savior of Hollywood, there's billions and billions of dollars Netflix has put on the table if this deal gets stopped.

33:26Right. That's leverage Trump has to make all kinds of demands, even though in any other administration it wouldn't happen that way. Are you guys rooting for Netflix because Sarandos isn't as tight with Trump as the Ellisons? Or is it still just, I mean, Netflix controlling Warner Brothers. That is a big market share right there. Yeah, I think it's complicated. I think the best outcome is no merger at all, but there are political equities and there's like business and Hollywood equities. I think from a political perspective, I'm not excited about Paramount because you don't want like a Trump aligned billionaire and his annoying kid having an even larger amount of market share and power in Hollywood.

33:59Antitrust advocates might say, though, that a super sized Paramount could create a streaming competitor to Netflix. That might be a good thing for consumers or for Hollywood, you know, trying to get more buyers out there in the market who make TV and film. The pushback to that, though, is like, I don't know, even if a deal goes through, like no matter what, there's one less buyer and that's not a good thing for people selling stuff. And then if Netflix wins, like there are a lot of potential downsides. It gives them a huge chunk of the streaming business. Paramount says it's 40%. I don't know how to vet that.

34:27But like they're the number one and number three biggest streamers. It means one less buyer in the market making stuff. It could kill the movie theater business because Netflix wants to get movies onto its streaming platform faster and that could drastically shorten theatrical release times. And then there's just a question of like, okay, so how is Netflix going to pay for this? Like, what costs are they going to cut? Are they going to fire people? Are they going to shut down lots? Are they going to raise prices? There was one analyst who said, where's my numbers? There's one analyst estimated that the deal needs to increase Netflix's cashflow by 8 billion per year for the next 20 years to justify itself.

35:00That's a lot of money. And then there's like a third theory out there that just like, actually, Netflix doesn't really care if they close the deal. They just want to freeze Warner Brothers discovery for 18 to 24 months while the process goes on um and keep them from getting sold elsewhere and then just like press their advantage in streaming who knows if that's true but it's an interesting theory yeah the other side of it though is according to the proposal there's even more cuts if warner brothers and paramount merge because those companies have more overlap totally there's this idea that that netflix is the death of of of movie theaters, maybe it is, but when Fox and Disney acquired 20th, there were 44 % fewer releases because there's just one less studio.

35:46And those are both companies that believe in the movie business. And I do worry about what happens if CNN comes under the control of a Trump loyal family. It's one less independent media company. So I don't think there's really any great outcomes in either acquisition. I guess the hope would be that this gets dragged out the Netflix deal gets killed and somehow in the interim, the Paramount deal falls apart too. But if right now the people are being a little too cavalier about saying the Netflix deal should be stopped without accepting that the downwind consequence of that is the Paramount one happens and there's a ton of bad outcomes for that too.

36:22I will say one of the arguments Netflix is making is that their, you know, their real competition is not with just other streamers, but TikTok, youtube and it is a um it is a bleak argument that may that that may or may not be true but like the idea that they they see themselves at least as competing uh for eyeballs with uh all the wonderful stuff that we see on tiktok i mean they're absolutely right i mean and they are and it's just like that is that is and if it tells you something about the future of where they want to go. I think it's like, I do think that all entertainment is losing like time and mind share to TikTok, you know, mostly TikTok.

37:06But the idea that that doesn't make it like a monopoly issue is absurd. No, it's just, I would, yeah, no, for sure. I was raising it because, um, is he, in some of the Netflix shows you see look like, uh, just a couple of TikToks strung together. Well, look, like I think the TikTok argument is a little, a little bit of a stretch. I don't think it's unfair to say that they're competing with YouTube. They are competing with YouTube. And also, by the way, YouTube spends a ton of money on original content now. It's not prestige scripted television. There's a way in which I feel like a lot of people that are really worried about this and are rightly worried about this, I always feel like we're just sort of following behind these sort of inexorable changes and complaining about them and also not really dealing with what I do think are complexities, which is these companies do spend huge amounts on original content.

37:57And I want movie theaters to survive, but then you look at the numbers and the entire movie business this year is maybe going to be$9 billion, the domestic box office. And it is dwarfed by the amount of money like Apple. Apple alone is going to spend what, like almost$5 billion on content this year. Netflix is around 17 or 18. YouTube is$30 billion. Like they're spending huge amounts of money and making incredible, you know, television shows that we would say are some of the best television shows ever made. So I guess I would like to, I feel like the conversation needs to turn to what does it look like to put pressure on these companies and maybe put pressure on a deal like this to get to a better version of where we're heading, as opposed to constantly having a conversation about the dangers of consolidation and of Silicon Valley's, you know, invasion of Hollywood.

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40:09While we're talking about the economy, business, and regulations, it's worth touching on the latest in artificial intelligence with a post on Truth Social Monday morning. Trump promised to sign an executive order this week that would attempt to sweep away any state regulations that try to guardrail AI. Here's some of what Trump wrote. There must be only one rule book if we are going to continue to lead in AI. There can be no doubt about this. AI will be destroyed in its infancy. You can't expect a company to get 50 approvals every time they want to do something. That will never work. What do you guys think?

40:43Do you think there's anything else behind Trump not wanting states to pass any AI regulations? Yeah, I just think all these AI companies are racing as fast as they can to build the most powerful product. And they believe that this is going to be, if not a winner takes all, a winner takes most industry. And the difference between being like number one and number two will be trillions of dollars. So they are trying to compete. They're trying to train models. They're trying to buy all the chips. They're trying to, they're competing for power, like literally like physical power from electricity. And they're spending billions of dollars.

41:11So the stakes are so high and they just don't want any guardrails in the way and they're and they want the status quo. And I think they're willing to pay for it. Like they're paying off the Trump administration. And, you know, you have AI safety experts pointing out that restaurants now face more regulations and safety standards than AI companies and the companies involved don't care. Right. Like Sam Altman doesn't care. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, they don't care. And so they know that Washington is broken. Congress won't get anything done. and that often the way regulation gets done in this country is California passes a law.

41:44And then that becomes the de facto standard because we're so big that other, you know, every company follows it. And Trump is pretending that this executive order will preempt that. I don't think it's going to work in any way in practice. But these companies are all kissing his ass and pouring political favors in his pocket and showing up at the White House all the time and going to dinners and, you know, paying off to build the ballroom and whatever. And I think that's why he's doing this yeah i think though the only positive in it is hoping that the reason he's doing this is because it looks like the the hopes for passing something through congress are falling apart and people were really worried about that that a and a provision was going to get snuck into this must pass defense bill because uh congress is barely able to govern if that barely is generous uh they end up sticking really important random bills attached to must fast bills, like a defense, a military bill.

42:37So if that has fallen out, they're doing this as a cope. And to Tommy's point, yeah, won't have nearly the same impact, if any impact. So it seems like he's doing it as a favor hit to his pals. And while there are also people who genuinely believe that we are in a race against China and anything that limits America's sort of rapacious building of server farms and data centers and power plants to support them, will mean we don't create the singular AI god before China does, at which point we'll all work for the Chinese version. Yeah. These people all paid for access, right? Yeah. And they've got their access.

43:19They're best buddies with Trump now. And I think persuading him on this is quite easy and his staff. I think they sit down with him and they say, okay, look at the economy right now. We have an economy that's built on data centers and private prisons. Nothing else is really good. And healthcare, I guess. The healthcare sector is growing. Nothing else is growing. And so if you want to be a successful president, you want the economy to continue to chug along as it is, you're going to have to support AI as fast as, development of AI as fast as possible, right? Then there's the beat China thing. There's also the, by the way, you don't want, and Trump has said this in truth posts before, you don't want these blue states like California, you don't want this commie California to develop some woke AI that we're going to have to contend with, right?

44:05Now, the challenge is a whole bunch of states have already started passing regulations on AI around political deepfakes, non-consensual sexual imagery. They have passed regulations to try to prevent AI from being used to discriminate. But it is a complete fake order. Like, it doesn't do anything. What's going to happen is if a state has a regulation that the Trump administration doesn't like, the Trump administration can then decide through the DOJ to try to sue the state and see if that works. They'll probably say it's, you know, interstate commerce clause that the feds are supposed to be able to regulate interstate commerce.

44:43The challenge is they're going to make the argument that like we need one federal set of regulations on AI because you can't have a patchwork set of like 50 different regulations. But they don't have a federal set of regulations. So it's hard to tell the states you can't do anything until maybe someday we do something in the federal government. Like it's one thing to say the federal regulation takes precedent over the state regulation. Like you have a good legal, maybe a good legal argument there. I don't know that you do by saying, we're getting around to it, but in the meantime, you can't do anything.

45:16It's not like, it's like the healthcare vote. They want to veto any legislative effort they don't agree with or that restricts these abilities company to operate across different states, but they just don't have a policy that they can coalesce around to regulate AI in the way that it obviously needs to be regulated. So they just are, they can't do it. They cannot govern. They cannot put together a proposal to pass something. So they're going to do this instead. You're right. I mean, the stock market is entirely propped up by AI, and he has a huge incentive to keep that bubble from bursting because it would be catastrophic.

45:47I do think also the crypto example is very instructive. Like Donald Trump hated cryptocurrency until a bunch of crypto executives came to him and they dumped money on him and created super PACs. And all of a sudden now he loves it. He also hated big tech until they kind of bowed to the altar and now he's a fan. So I just think the China thing is just such bullshit to me because today Trump advanced that he will allow the sale of the H200 NVIDIA chip to China, which is like they're just below their Blackwell series. It's like the best of the last generation chips, very powerful chips. And so we're going to send like our second best chips.

46:20We're going to get rid of export controls on AI chips because we want to beat China. That makes absolutely no sense. And when you push them on that, they'll be like, well, if we don't give them our chips, they're going to make chips through Huawei. Like, you guys don't think that they're going to subsidize their biggest tech company anyway? I just, like, don't find it at all believable. It's a very weird argument. Basically, the argument is we want to get them hooked on American technology so that they're dependent on the NVIDIA chips. but it's also unclear whether China will actually say yes and buy the chips because they might think that it's like a backdoor security risk in which case what is the purpose of this whole thing?

47:00It's like if they buy them then but they're also subsidizing Huawei like then how are we getting them hooked on NVIDIA technology? And the Chinese can be like you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna buy Taiwan with these warships. That's what we're gonna do. That's our policy. It's a David Sachs brainchild, right? And the other argument they're making is like, well, by allowing NVIDIA to sell some of these to China, it'll just make NVIDIA more money. And if NVIDIA has more money, they'll be able to help the United States beat China to the AI super god again. We don't know what we're racing towards.

47:31We don't. Is the other thing? And by the way, I don't— Is it AGI, right? Artificial General Intelligence? But there's no specific goal here. We're just racing. How many fucking dogs do you attach to the bobsled before it goes to speed of sound? It's like, I like, don't, I'm like, I like, I'm really get, it's like a terrifying thing what's happening. And maybe like the, the, the idea that, that they all have like, there's like genuine, like old school kind of competition going on, trying to make the best product and get there first. And that we have seen over the years that in like technology, there are all these economies where one wins and the rest fall.

48:05Google is other examples. But then it's like, so you're all racing because you have to get there first. there is some sort of super intelligence that you don't understand and that will be smarter than us. And then, oh, by the way, we've spent the last decade building how many fucking data centers and server farms that are currently of inflated value that they all are pretending have more value than they do because the things burn out and they have to replace them. It's like the like awareness of the bubble as we're in the bubble is very reminiscent of several previous terrible financial catastrophes that we've very recently been through.

48:45It is notable that a lot of the opposition to sort of the AI industry going at breakneck speed and specifically Trump's move today is coming from some people in his base, prominent people, Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is one place where she diverged from Trump. Ron DeSantis has been leading the opposition to this move as well. He was out today with a statement critical of Trump's EO. What do you think? Is this like another sort of wedge issue with Trump's base that Democrats should be taking advantage of here and maybe building new coalitions? I think so. I mean, look, I think he's a fake populist and we should hammer him for it.

49:21And it's this issue. I mean, it's tech companies showering him with money and compliments and they get what they want. The president of Argentina kisses Trump's ass at CPAC. They get a$40 billion bailout. The crypto assholes get their special favors and policies. Like, was it the crypto National Reserve? Remember that moment? Whatever happened to that? Yeah, I don't know. Hey, somebody follow up on the crypto national reserve. How are we doing? How are we doing? How are we doing? How much is in the reservoir? We're pardoning all the people's crypto we are going to seize. Cuts Medicaid, does nothing when healthcare prices go up, as we talked about a minute ago.

49:52I do think this is a piece of the puzzle of just how rather than drain the swamp, Washington is more bought and sold than ever. And you're hearing this case being made by conservatives. Like, you know, Nick Fuentes was just unloading on Trump on all these grounds, too. So it's coming from the left and the right. And I think it's a case worth making. I think it's also it's corruption is a piece of it. I think for AI, it goes like well beyond that as well. I mean, it is the DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene have voiced concerns about the job loss. I mean, you've heard, you know, Tucker Carlson has had this debate with like Ben Shapiro like a year ago or something where I think Tucker said, you know, he would.

50:32If you could stop, we're going to have these driverless cars. And if you could have a regulation stopping the creation of driverless cars because it's going to get rid of all the truckers and all the trucking jobs in this country, he would do it. And so there's going to be this massive potential job displacement that a lot of folks on the right in a more sort of protectionist way are going to say like they don't like. There is like what it's going to do to our kids. It's sort of the social media phone argument on steroids. So you get a lot of some of the more religious conservatives concerned about that.

51:03So there are a host of reasons beyond just corruption that like the Republican base or the MAGA base is like really worried about when it comes to AI. And the polling bears this out as well. Like, you know, Harvard just did their big youth poll. And for among young people, only 14 percent said that AI will create more opportunities and 44 percent said that it will take away more opportunities. That's young people. We're usually, you know, kind of enamored with new technology. Emerson just did a poll in Pennsylvania. 48 % of voters think that AI will have a negative impact on the economy. Only 25 % said positive.

51:4255 % of people in Pennsylvania believe that AI will decrease jobs in the industry they work in. Personal thing. And then only 16 % said increase. And then there was a big, huge pew poll from the summer. AI will worsen our ability to think creatively. 53 % believe that. Only 16 % disagree. and form meaningful relationships. 50 % agree with that, only 5 % disagree. One challenge is how many different kinds of technology AI represents because it is both something that will drive cars. It is something that will replace writers. Like there's so many implications of it, some of which are awesome and great that we should be very much excited about.

52:23Some of which are - Biomedical sphere specifically, I think. Some of which are great tools for artists to use in ways that help their productivity. Some are purely parasitic. And some that can only exist because they are, you know, drafting off of stolen art or using art to kind of replicate what an artist might do in a world where this technology didn't exist. Friends, all of this stuff, like, has all these sort of negative consequences. But we're not, like, because Trump is in the pocket of these industries, there's so many ways in which we're not having those debates. and there's no hope of any kind of real like reforms or regulations to reign that in.

53:01Like they've already trolled and stolen so much information to make their database of language to turn around Super Google. So yeah. It's totally unsettling. I mean, parents are also just watching their kids use AI to cheat at school all day and they're not learning anything. And like, meanwhile, Australia is banning social media for kids under 16. And we're letting the same companies run by the same assholes figure out AGI. die. Like, this is a terrible setup. Everyone, you don't really have to explain that to a lot of people. And it's going to happen so much faster than any other technological development.

53:33I think that is one of the big differences here. I mean, it is more powerful than past technological developments, but that's usually the case. But just the speed, like, we're all like, oh, well, Trump's here now. Maybe we can figure this out, you know, in 2028. Like, it's happening. Like you said, the stuff is being stolen right now. The technology is being developed right now. It's all happening. The other thing, too, is the all these sort of costs that are not being incurred by these companies that are being incurred by people who never signed up for them. Like I saw a teacher being interviewed talking about how a big part of a teacher's job now is trying to figure out if AI wrote something.

54:05And a student will generate an essay in 10 seconds that will take hours for that teacher to untangle. They didn't train to figure out what AI is. You know what the proposed solution for that is? Develop an AI that can help tell you whether the college essay was written by AI. That's seriously what they're doing. It exists. Yeah. One thing for sure is that whatever happens, we would never want some commie blue state to pass any kind of regulation that would deprive our right-wing influencers from using AI to anthropomorphize dead presidents for the sake of content. As Glenn Beck has apparently done with George Washington, guys.

54:41Let's listen. If I may speak plainly. My countrymen, the danger, the greatest danger to our republic, lies not in foreign arms or political faction, but in the decay... May I just interrupt you for a second? Could you just dumb it down just a little bit? Okay. Let me speak to Americans. If I'm honest, America's biggest problem isn't political or economic. It's all moral. Now, where are the citizens who value duty over comfort, principle over popularity? America was built to be a moral and self-governing nation. So are you guys more or less worried about AI after that? Yeah, that's George Washington with some testosterone gel, who's like a big fan of like looks maxing.

55:29Why am I wearing the same shirt as George Washington? Why is George Washington wearing the same shirt as you? Yeah, he's got sick hair, he's got nice flow. Good build. Well, it's interesting that George Washington, they made him talk like we do today, but they didn't fix the hair. The hair is still this old situation. He looks like a Noompa Loompa, is what he looks like. He does look like a Noompa Loompa. A Noompa Loompa that sounds suspiciously like Glenn Beck. You know, this is such a, like, this is AI. It's like, this is what I mean. It's like, it can drive a car. It can find new molecules to cure diseases.

55:58It also functionally is the same as brainyquotes.net because you can just make it say, like, it's like, you know reach for the stars gandhi you know like that's what this is just somebody putting their own it's like let's we can make a face of george washington saying whatever we want exciting he left the blaze i think was his publication to do this full-time i think this this ai george this is his job yeah george has got nominated for a golden globe and i just that's so that's exciting really work those refs and just just so everyone knows glennbeck has put that out as the preview the full conversation there's a full conversation that is not out yet at least as of this recording and a couple a pretty intimate sex scene with martha which is exciting just like couldn't be less compelling whatever that was also like him having to it's not like he just throws ai george washington up on the screen and lets him go like he's interviewing him it's like no no no slow down slow down and also speak like today come on dumb it down for us ai george what else will he have him do it was just funny you generate an AI George Washington.

57:02He's like, I will not proceed with this interview for even a moment longer until you let me see one of your magic dentists. Please help me. Please help me. I have oak teeth. I haven't had a good night's sleep in several years. And I still have slaves at home. Yeah, yeah. And I do have those slaves. It's just my thing. Anyway, stuff like that makes you like, okay, maybe we shouldn't worry about AI killing us all because it's doing that. But I do think that's deceiving because so many people, like their first encounter with AI is slop garbage like that. And they're like, yeah, maybe it's not so bad.

57:35But like, meanwhile, like you said, there's a lot of other things going on with AI that are a lot scarier than that. Yeah, can I make one pitch on how we talk about this? Because I do this too, everyone does this. AI will not be the thing that destroys our jobs or takes over our economy. It will be the people that own the company. It is a tool. It is not a person, it is a tool. And it's a very powerful tool. It's a tool that can displace whole parts, whole jobs and industries. And it's being created by very powerful tools. Very powerful tools are in fact in charge. so it's there's this way in which we feel like kind of i don't know like um kind of a strap to this thing that's and we can't stop it it's like no no like it is an important technology it will have great uses we decide that we have some say over it and we should like i think take more agency in how we talk about it in a theoretical democracy for sure in a theoretical democracy but when we say ai is stealing the jobs there will be a person who presses the button who controls the company that makes the money those are the people who are taking the jobs yeah so glenn beck acquired a bunch of historical documents, which he says he's now created a digital vault to put them on the blockchain to ensure that they're not tampered with.

58:36Who is tampering with historical documents? They're historical, yeah. Aren't they in the public domain? Isn't that why they're historical documents? I think he's bothered by the fact that at the Library of Congress, it now says they, them, hold these truths to be self-evident. And I think that was the part that really drove him crazy. And if you want to take a book out, the librarian is Marco Rubio, and so you have to get his permission. Right, and I think there's that part of the, where it says, you know, that Jefferson was checking his privilege towards the end of the Declaration of Independence and King George III was not creating enough space for liberty.

59:10So I have to understand why that is confusing, but sorry, Glenn, that's what's always been there. He's so weird. All right, when we get back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw about the battle for Warner Brothers, what it actually means for all of us. Two announcements before we get to that. But big news, guys, for our listeners down under. We are bringing Pod Save America live to New Zealand and Australia for the first time ever. Join us for the 2026 Pod Save America, hopefully just visiting tour. I do like that name. I don't want to give him any ideas over in the White House.

59:44We're headed to Auckland on February 11th and then three shows in Australia after that. Melbourne on February 13th, Brisbane on February 14th and Sydney on February 16th. Already getting the pronunciations right. Yeah, well, they have them here in the script for me. Thank God. I would have fucked that up. Go to cricket.com slash events to get tickets and use the code PSADOWNUNDER to get pre-sale tickets now. How exciting is this, guys? PSADOWNUNDER. Yeah, PSADOWNUNDER. Listen, I wanted PSA After Dark, but you guys said no. We're married. PSADOWNUNDER? Is that a no? Oh, hey. Sure. I'll do that one, too.

1:00:19Sign me up for some of that. Dan is coming, too. Yeah, Dan's coming. Whoa. Easy. Okay. Oh, that's the line? That is the line. Got it. Arbitrary line. No, I hadn't gotten there yet. I'm glad I'm there right now. The point is, Australia, we're coming. Dan's glad you got there, too. He didn't hear it. Down under. Down under. The newest also, this is another announcement, the newest book from Crooked Media Reads is coming out January 27th, 2026. It's called Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind by one of our favorite political journalists, New York Times Magazine writer Jason Zangerly.

1:00:55why a book about Tucker Carlson? Why not? In a lot of ways, Tucker's rise is what made the Trump age possible. He is an extremely influential figure on the right. And Jason's book gets inside, you know, what happened, how his rise came about. It's an excellent book. It's so good. I've read it. It's a fantastic book. It is such a great, like you follow Tucker's career, but it also traces the arc of the MAGA movement and how it's kind of lost it a little bit lately. You think? Really a little bit, a little bit. Book comes out January 27th, but if you pre-order a copy now, you can get 15 % off with code Jason15 at crooked.com slash books.

1:01:30What a code. That's crooked.com slash books and the code is Jason15. Yeah. It's not exactly Yes We Dan or PSA Down Under, but it is Jason15. It's Jason15. One five. One five. It's like Adam 22, but different.

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1:03:15Joining me now is managing editor of Bloomberg News and author of Bloomberg's Screentime Newsletter and the reporter who broke the story of Netflix's successful bid to buy Warner Brothers. Lucas Shaw, welcome to the pod. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So why is Netflix, which has never grown via acquisition before, interested in buying Warner Brothers? Two reasons. One offensive, one defensive. I think for offensive reasons, look, it's a great asset, right? It's got one of the great film and television studios, one that's been around for more than a century, has shows that Netflix knows are popular already with its customers, like Friends, which used to be on Netflix, now on HBO Max, a bunch of movies.

1:03:53It's got HBO, which is a premium brand to which Netflix once aspired and has since sort of eclipsed. And so if it can buy that, feed it in, get all of these hit shows that it can offer to its customers, it makes its proposition much stronger. And then defensive, you know, it's got this new kid on the block, David Ellison, spending money like crazy because he's got it from his dad. And they, you know, they don't want, he's already swallowed Paramount and they don't want to risk him adding Warner Brothers as well. So it seems as though Paramount was caught off guard because they thought this was theirs to lose.

1:04:29Now Paramount is launching a hostile bid. But Paramount is a smaller company. Forget Netflix. It's a smaller company than Warner Brothers. So this is only possible because Ellison has his fortune. Plus, there's cash from the Saudis, the Qataris, the Emiratis. There's funds from Jared Kushner's investment firm. Twice as much of the money, at least from the bid that we heard about last week, comes from the Middle East as comes from the Ellisons. The Ellison family, as well as this company, Redbird, which is a private equity firm, they would be the controlling shareholders, have a lot of the economic interests.

1:05:11But it was interesting on Monday morning where they issued one press release that didn't mention some of this other financing. And then in the filing that they had to put out, it did disclose. Look, I can't fully explain the thinking behind why kind of Middle Eastern petro states do what they do. They have been spreading their money around and investing in a kind of diversifying beyond oil, trying to gain also, I think, soft power through investments in sports and media, right? There's a kind of a Saudi affiliated group that just bought or is the primary acquirer of electronic arts, the big video game publisher that makes Madden and other things.

1:05:46So I think they see an opportunity to buy an interesting, sexy asset that will hopefully make money for them in the long run and give them more influence on a global stage. It also means that they're closely tied in business with the Ellison family, which is, you know, good people to be close to, with the Kushners. And, you know, if Trump blesses it, also gets them another sort of point of contact with the Trump administration. So let's talk about that, whether Trump blesses it. It's been interesting seeing it taken as a given that Jared Kushner being associated with the Ellison bid is a sign that it would have a smoother path to approval, the acceptance of the fact that there is so much interpersonal relationships and just old school corruption here.

1:06:32At the same time, the Ellisons have spent a year doing a fair amount of bootlicking. And then Trump is asked about this. He says, oh, we got to see, we got to see. It would be quite a shame for them to have spent a year doing all that sucking up and end up with nothing to show for it. Well, look, Ellison's got something already from Larry Ellison's close relationship at the White House, which is they got Paramount, right? They went after Paramount very aggressively and got the deal approved reasonably quickly, all things considered. Now I think you've got the president in a pretty good situation for him where he has two different companies, both of which want to do this deal.

1:07:17And even though he does not have the official power to say yay or nay, he obviously can have a tremendous amount of influence between his relationship with the DOJ and other regulatory agencies where, you know, Netflix is going to want to make sure that he's happy with their bid. And the Ellisons who've already been very friendly to him in a lot of ways are going to do the same. So it positions him as something of a power broker, which he obviously likes. So in your own reporting, you found that Sarandos had done a lot to work on his Trump relationship. Can you talk about that and how strategic that was in advance of this?

1:07:57Yeah. I mean, look, the Netflix, I think if you look at the management of the company, is one of the more democratic, by which I mean supportive of the Democratic Party, media companies, companies in the country, right? Reed Hastings, the co-founder, former CEO, has invested a lot of money, especially of late in political causes, has been a very vocal critic of President Trump. Ted Sarandos's wife, Nicole Levant, was an ambassador in the Obama administration to the Bahamas. So obviously, as a result of that, I mean, the Obamas had a, I guess, continued to have a production deal with Netflix and Sarandos is close to them.

1:08:34And my understanding is that when Trump came back into power in 2024, 25, Netflix looked around and said, we don't have a lot of relationships in his inner circle and we need to fix that. We are one of the biggest and most influential media companies in the world. Netflix has done a really good job over the years of largely evading kind of intense regulatory scrutiny. Now that they are at the size that they are, for that to continue, I think they couldn't be seen as sort of an enemy of the state, if you will, in the way that Trump is routinely attacking NBC or Disney and ABC, Netflix doesn't want to be in that position.

1:09:12And so Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, who's kind of the more charming schmoozy of the two co-CEOs and the Hollywood one, had a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with President Trump last December, which was reported about at the time. It was a very long dinner. I think they, my understanding is they got along quite well at the dinner and had remained in touch since then. texting, talking, meeting somewhat regularly, including most recently in kind of mid-November where Ted had a meeting of more than an hour with Trump at the White House. Now, keep in mind, they're not just talking about this deal, right?

1:09:48Donald Trump has been talking a lot about tariffs on the film business that don't make a lot of sense, that people in Hollywood want to influence in some way. There was some concern, I think, early in the administration that he might revisit the idea of net neutrality, which is something that Netflix has strong opinions about. And in the most recent meeting, obviously, they wanted to talk about this deal because Netflix was in the middle of what it knew would be a kind of a contentious process. Yeah, well, it's just, you know, you make the point that, you know, this ostensibly should be in the hands of regulators.

1:10:20And there's a sort of a formal process and the president is not necessarily directly involved. Trump himself is saying it's up to him. And clearly the actors in this are very concerned of the ways in which he will get involved. So let's talk about what the administration could do. The head of the theater lobbying group called this an unprecedented threat to the global exhibition business. The WGA said the world's largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent. Roy Price, who was the former of Amazon Studios said, the long prophesied death of Hollywood may finally arrive.

1:10:58These are dire, dire warnings about this. What are you hearing about why people are so much more concerned about this deal than if the Paramount deal had gone through? So I actually don't think that that's the case. It's just Netflix won, right? Or won the initial auction. And so people came out strongly against Netflix. I think some of the same people that you mentioned, not all of them, would have been concerned about Paramount, right? I think the guilds, for example, WGA, DJ, representing writers and directors, they don't like the idea of a studio going away, which could happen if Paramount won.

1:11:33I think you're probably right. I think it's the theatrical business, the movie theaters wouldn't be as worried about Paramount because David Ellison has been very clear that he is a champion of movie theaters and wants to put movies in theaters, whereas Netflix has a long crack record of releasing movies straight to the internet and not wanting to have what long stretches of movies being exclusive to theaters. Now, Netflix is saying in this case that they will kind of run Warner Brothers as it has been. And that means putting movies in theaters, but a lot of folks just don't believe them. And then as for, you know, you brought up Roy Price, you know, he used to run one of the biggest competitors to Netflix.

1:12:13And I think there's a lot of concern. And certainly the argument that Paramount has made is that in streaming, Netflix, which is already the biggest player would get even bigger and stronger. Um, so I, but I look, the entertainment business is freaked out about Warner brothers trading hands, no matter what. I think if you ask the average person, they just say, don't sell it, stay independent. You don't need to do a deal. Um, but it's, it's one thing to sort of believe that philosophically. It's another thing when David Ellison comes and starts throwing money at you at a certain point, the shareholders do have an obligation to consider a deal because if your stock was at$12 and now someone wants to give you$30, that's a pretty good deal.

1:12:53Right. Well, and I take your point that I agree that a lot of these, a lot of people that are being critical of this deal would also be critical of an Ellison deal. But if this deal gets blocked, that is likely what happens. You know, when Disney acquired Fox's studio, the number of releases theatrically went down, even though those are both companies that believe in the movies. Paramount and Warner Brothers look a lot more alike than Netflix and Paramount look alike. So the reason I ask that is only because Trump has a lot of leverage in this moment. And I've seen a lot of talk about block this deal, this deal's better, this deal's worse.

1:13:33I wonder what happens if people start thinking of the ways in which Trump could, through kind of regulators, the government, Let's describe it as the federal government, not the vehicle of the godhead. But the federal government decided to make some demands upon Netflix and its acquisition. Are there changes to the deal that the WGA might like to see made that the theaters would like to see made that would make it more appealing? Yeah, you brought up a point that was interesting because it's sort of the argument Netflix has made, which is that we have less obvious overlap or fewer redundancies, synergies than Paramount.

1:14:17So we don't own a big studio, so we will continue to operate it as is. Whereas if Warner Brothers and Paramount came together, they can say that they're going to release more than 30 movies a year, but they probably won't do that. To your point about Disney and Fox, the numbers come down. You know, there are the conditions that Netflix could agree to in the deal that would placate people in the entertainment business. And then there are those that I think would placate regulators. And I think they're not necessarily the same. You know, if Netflix sort of contractually committed to putting movies in theaters, now I'm not sure they're going to do that, but let's say they did, that would certainly, you know, assuage the concerns of something like Cinemas United, which is, I think, the CEO you referenced earlier of kind of a theater lobbying group.

1:15:06If they committed to increasing overall spending, which again, these are all things that they've already publicly said they're going to do. They will continue. Warner Brothers Television Studio will continue to produce shows for third parties. Those are things that would make people feel a little bit better. You know, those aren't the most normal conditions for, you know, the case against Netflix would you from a federal government standpoint wouldn't be what's going to happen to the movie theater business right unfortunately certain businesses rise and fall over time and it's not the federal government's job to enter this is not like a business that matters for national security we all love movies we want theaters to continue to exist the federal government's biggest kind of concern when it comes to this deal would be antitrust and whether Netflix has too much power in streaming.

1:15:52And so I think to make streaming, to make people more kind of comfortable on the streaming front, I could see Netflix agreeing to sell or not acquire sort of HBO streaming business in other parts of the world. Like if they had to appease regulators in Europe or Latin America. Here, it's hard to see what they could do on that front. Their argument is just going to be, you combine Netflix and HBO and we still account for less TV viewing than YouTube. That's going to be the crux of their argument. Right. No, well, I it's funny because I guess what I'm at is we see all these sort of extraordinary interventions by the Trump administration and ways in which people treat Trump abnormally.

1:16:33Right. They lobby him personally. Jared Kushner being part of the deal makes the deal more attractive. And yet when it comes to how we talk about what the remedies could be, we all were down to the old style of remedies. But Trump seems to have been taking at least some kind of an interest in reviving Hollywood. He'd like to be seen as somebody that does that. Like, I wonder what happens if people like if people put their heads together and say, what if we put together what we would like Trump to see make what demands we would like to see Trump make of Netflix, irrespective of what these deals have traditionally look like.

1:17:09Right. If so, if you said, OK, Donald Trump, you want to be seen as a savior of Hollywood. You have a bunch of folks lobby him and say, you know, you talked about tariffs, but what about this? Because tariffs don't actually make sense. Right, right. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Netflix has put$5.8 billion on the table if this falls apart. For scale, the domestic box office in the United States is maybe going to hit$9 billion if people go see Avatar. Right? Like, they put a ton of, like, but I'm serious. Like, they've put a ton of money on the table. Right? Like, that is leverage, not just as the, between the parties making the deal.

1:17:41That's the leverage the federal government has in this situation. Right. I guess my question is, do you think that Donald Trump actually cares about some of those initiatives? I think Donald Trump cares about things in front of him and in how it reflects on him. And Donald Trump, here is how you can save Hollywood, is a story he would love to read. And I guess like stepping back, I saw the WGA's statement and I agree with the sentiment. I understand where they're coming from. But I just look at the last few years and there's this kind of unaddressed contradiction in how people outside of the streamers have reacted to changes in the industry, which is on the one hand, you see a lot of the arguments that have a lot of validity and then the Roy Price arguments about consolidation.

1:18:35And then on the other hand, these companies are criticized for the ways in which they're damaging the industry. And yet they are spending extraordinary amounts of money on content every year. we are not where the peak was two or three years ago, but far more money will be spent making scripted television shows this year than say 10 years ago, right? So there's like unaddressed conflict here or contradiction here about what's actually happening to the industry. And I don't know if you feel that in talking to people about the ways in which these companies have brought a lot of money in while at the same time, the concentration has unintended consequences.

1:19:21Yeah. I think you're also getting at why, just from an entertainment industry perspective, there's so much resistance to the Netflix deal in particular, because Hollywood remains an incredibly insular community. And it has never, try as Ted Sarandos has, and he is in many ways like the mayor of Hollywood, but he's never been able to quite take that mantle or position because Netflix has always been viewed as a little bit of an outsider, right? And you have a lot of people who work for the various studios who still resent Netflix for the changes that have happened rather than going, oh, well, maybe we fucked up in like not recognizing what was going to happen and better positioning ourselves.

1:20:04So I think that's definitely where some of it comes from. And to your point about the contradiction, yeah, look, I got a call from a very successful producer late Friday who was like, why is everyone freaking out about the movie business? Netflix doesn't have duplication with Warner Brothers in this area. It will continue to make movies. And by the way, Netflix's movie business has been pretty crappy for the last many years. them buying a studio that actually makes good movies and putting it on the platform could be a good thing. They were actually more worried about the television business because Netflix has more kind of overlap there with Warner Brothers and thought there should be some job losses.

1:20:43But if you are looking at it, Netflix has promised to make a smaller cuts than Paramount has. Netflix says two to three billion in cuts. Paramount says six. That's a pretty big difference. How much of that is personal? How much of that is Zaslav just not wanting to do a deal with a Nepo baby? I think personal egos always matter in this stuff. I mean, like we like to say it's all about the numbers and that's where boards make their decision. But the fact that David Zaslav likes Ted Sarandos probably helps him. The fact that, I mean, during the process of the sale, if you're in a room and you sort have got like Ted Sarandos on one side and David Ellison on the other, there's no question that Ted is going to come off as smoother and a little more charming.

1:21:33And that matters. I do think push comes to shove like money talks. And so if the Paramount deal were clearly better than the Netflix deal, Warner Brothers would have taken it. And what happens to CNN and all this? So Netflix doesn't want the cable companies. Ellison was interested in the cable companies, including some kind of a way of putting CNN and CBS together. But if the Netflix deals go goes through, that would mean a new company would exist that David Elson could potentially acquire anyway. He could, but I don't think he's interested in just the cable networks are like the tax to get the stuff that he wants.

1:22:11So I don't think that he would go and buy them. Yeah, if Netflix, if the Netflix deal is going to happen, they would spin off CNN and a bunch of other cable networks into a separate asset first, and then what remains, the studio and streaming, would be acquired by Netflix. Comcast already did a version of this where they spun out a bunch of their cable networks into something called Versant, which has MSNOW, formerly known as MSNBC. MsNOW, yeah. MsNOW. But so no, I don't think David Ellison would go after it. I don't think David Ellison wants CNN. It's nice to have, but he wants the studio. He wants Warner Brothers Studio.

1:22:43He wants the HBO streaming service. Of all those things, the networks are the third most appealing part. So that's interesting because if I've not seen that talked about enough, because I see a lot of people saying how bad this deal would be. Right. But I do think there's something. People are already assuming that Barry Weiss is going to be in charge of the whole thing. And yeah, there's been a lot of. Well, I just. A lot of concern. What happens? Like, you know, the Netflix deal gets killed. People that have said it should be stopped get what they want. The Ellison deal happens. I do think there's whatever approval problems there could be.

1:23:17It seems clear that because it's smaller, the argument against antitrust is stronger for Warner Brothers and Paramount. And all of a sudden you have Middle Eastern petro states, to use your words, own a big chunk of not just Warner Brothers, but also CNN. Right. Right. You know, it's the kind of fact that in almost any other time would likely be disqualifying for a bid. And there was a point at which the Paramount bid had Chinese money in it too. Yeah, Tencent pulled out like a couple weeks ago, right? Because Tencent had been an investor in Skydance, David Ellison's initial company. All that stuff would normally be disqualifying.

1:24:00But obviously, the current administration has really likes the relationships in the Gulf region. Jared Kushner does a lot of business in that area. And they don't seem too concerned about the presence of Middle Eastern money in the bid. I've certainly spoken with people who are, but that doesn't seem like something that President Trump is going to kill a deal over. Well, two great options for a great American company. What would be your preferred outcome? To have Kamala Harris give a different answer about why she'll be different than Joe Biden on the fucking view. But no, my actual feeling about this, I have no idea.

1:24:48I have no idea. But I do feel like even into the strike post-strike, Like there's a way in which I just constantly feel like the people inside the industry are kind of running behind the ways it's changing and asking it to stop. And I would just say, I don't know what it looks like, but I would be interested in people who really feel passionately about why a deal like this is dangerous to say this deal should be stopped. But if it goes through, here are the things that we would we would hope an administration trying to save Hollywood would propose. And I would be interested in that conversation because right now it's, you know, which, which, you know, like we're, you know, at the bus stop with a bindle and it's like, which who's going to, which, which terrible ride are we going to take?

1:25:38but I'd be really interested in like what it would look like for someone to come up with creative ideas for what a company with the scale of Netflix could do for theatrical releases and for bringing more production back to California, New York, the United States. So that to me is what I'm interested in. Yeah, no, look, I think you have identified something that bothers me a lot in my coverage of the entertainment business, which is that the people who complain about the ways in which the industry have changed are not really offering proactive solutions. They're just sort of trying to make it go back to the way things were, and that never works.

1:26:21Yeah, and it's hard to grapple with. There's nuance here. Netflix has made extraordinary movies and shows. Some of the best shows are being made by Apple, a company that was not in this business till a few years ago, right? Like everybody, if you need to change the subject over the holidays, you'll say, are you watching Pluribus, right? That's made by the phone company. So, you know, it's just to me, like I feel like I am long on people talking about how dangerous all this is and short on the practical changes that would recognize that we're not going back. And could you go find some of those?

1:27:02Can you go talk to some of your people and come back with some of those? I will work on that. I'll put together some bullet points and get a one-er for the president. Lucas Shaw, thank you so much for your time. Good to talk to you. Yeah, thanks for having me.

1:27:19That's our show for today. Thanks to Lucas Shaw for coming on. Thanks to AI George Washington for lending us his voice. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin.

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