The Legacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson & the Future of WBD 2/17/26

0:00At Venture Global, we think about what can be done, not what's usually done. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.

0:49Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. Bring in show music, please.

1:03David Faber:This is Squawk Pod, and I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. On today's episode, news in the bidding war for Warner Brothers' Discovery. Paramount Skydance has a week to present an offer better than Netflix's. I'd have to say, Joe, this looks like a pooper get off the pot moment. They keep saying they're going to come up with better offer. They're saying you got seven days to do it. David Faber helps us break down the news and the counter-counter offers that could be on deck. I do wonder how disciplined Netflix will be if they're given the right to match. Other headlines that got us squawking today fall out from the Epstein files, tension between Anthropik and the U.S.

1:45David Faber:military, and the U.S. nuclear talks with Iran underway today in Geneva, as military presence in the region amps up. The U.S. military is preparing for an operation against Iran that could last weeks. And finally, we're remembering Reverend Jesse Jackson, an iconic American leader in civil rights and politics. President and CEO of the National Urban League, Mark Morial, joins us. He was someone that challenged the status quo, but he was also very much a diplomat In understanding that to move the needle for equal opportunity in civil rights, you had to also be in dialogue with those that sometimes you disagree with.

2:29David Faber:It's Tuesday, February 17th, and Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran are set to hold a second round of talks over that country's nuclear program as the U.S. beefs up its military presence in the region. Reports say that President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to attend the talks in Switzerland. Speaking on Air Force One last night, President Trump said he would be indirectly involved.

3:16Yesterday, Iran's foreign minister met with the UN's atomic watchdog on X. He said, in his words, I'm in Geneva with real ideas to achieve a fair and equitable deal. What is not on the table? Submission before threats. Over the weekend, Reuters reported that the U.S. military is preparing for an operation against Iran that could last weeks if President Trump gives the go-ahead or seeing some interest on betting sites from people that have had some success in the past with anticipating this type of thing. Before the end of February, I think, it is weird to be able to bet on something. On the outcome of war.

3:55On the outcome of whether there is. And then I was thinking, what if it's just a really, I guess it means anything, A military effort? What if it's targeted or if it was small? Does anything count? Who goes in to decide whether you get paid or not? That's complicated. That's complicated. That's one of many problems that arise. Does Koushi decide? In the production markets. Yeah. I guess they are the deciders. Because you know, I won a soccer game. You remember when I did? Yeah, you're kind of high. I won that soccer. It was the final. I won it because I picked the team that won, but it was tied in regulation, so they didn't win until the goals or the things, you know, the kicks.

4:36The kicks afterwards. Yeah, that's how they won. Not penalty kicks. So they didn't pay that off. Not penalty kicks. It was a tie. The end of the thing was a tie. So they have ways of you just got to watch. That's the vigorous, right? House always wins. Hyatt Hotels chairman Thomas Pritzker announcing he's going to retire following the release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Pritzker will leave his post as the hotel chain's executive chairman immediately. Recently released Epstein files show that Pritzker maintained contact with Maxwell, as well as the late financier, following his guilty plea in 2008 in Florida on charges related to soliciting prostitution, including one charge involving a minor.

5:25In a statement, Pritzker said that he deeply regretted his association with Epstein and Maxwell and in his words I exercise terrible judgment in maintaining contact with them just every week it's just his temp it's the people that guy knew it's just mind-boggling there's no one he didn't did you hear that he was also involved in the UK he called himself a world economic forum concierge where he would get better rooms for people and different things along the way too and he was speaking with the guy who I think now you mean Davos? Yeah. Epstein. Yeah. See, I should have tried to get in touch with that.

6:00That's why we wind up with the rooms we're in. Because we didn't know them. We're in a former TB sanitarium is where we are. Which I like. I'm not complaining. Oh, you don't? I'm not complaining about it. All right. Well, we're back. We made it. There is more follow-up from the Epstein files as well. Reports say that entertainment executive Casey Wasserman will sell his talent to a marketing agency following the release of flirtatious emails that he had exchanged with Ghislaine Maxwell. Wasserman is also the chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee. And last week, that group's executive committee backed Wasserman to continue in his current role with the Games.

6:38The U.S. military in a fight with AI startup Anthropic. This is an Axios report. says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is close to cutting business ties with the company and labeling it a supply chain risk. And that would mean that any company wanting to do business with the Pentagon would have to certify it doesn't work with Anthropic. The report says the dispute is centered on how the military might deploy Anthropic's AI model, Claude, with the company not wanting its technology to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to develop weapons that fire without human involvement. The news follows a Wall Street Journal report from over the weekend that said Claude was used in the military's operation last month to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

7:33Cheese will be next.

7:35David Faber:Coming up on Squawk Pod, the countdown clock is on for Paramount Skydance if it wants to present an offer for Warner Brothers Discovery. Another one, that is. CNBC's David Faber breaks down today's news from the media merger saga. It's going to be an interesting seven days that should, that should conclude at least who is going to be the buyer here, not the antitrust side.

8:05Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

8:34This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. That once was a magic. Sorry. At Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, we don't do fairy tales. We do real, like real adventures to Mars or real journeys into the future to see how imagination can really take us to strange new worlds and real trips into the past where we meet heroes and legends way ahead of their time.

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9:36David Faber:You're listening to Squawk Pod with Becky Quick and Joe Kernan. Here's Becky. Let's talk about the latest corporate news. Warner Brothers Discovery is reportedly considering reopening sales talks with Paramount Skydance. A Bloomberg report notes Warner's board hasn't decided on anything yet and still has a deal in place with Netflix. Last week, Paramount strengthened its offer for Warner Brothers. Among the sweeteners that they lashed out here with is a so-called tickling fee, that would be payable to Warner shareholders if there are any delays getting regulatory approval for a deal. That could signal Paramount thinks its offer has a better chance of passing muster in Washington.

10:15By the way, don't miss an exclusive interview with the Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. That's coming up this afternoon on Closing Bell Overtime. It has been interesting to watch this play out because it looked like Netflix was in a pretty good position. And there's just some shareholders still at Warner that think that maybe, even if Netflix prevails, that Netflix would have to match a higher bid from Warner. Yes. And they just want... From Paramount. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Would have to match that higher bid from Paramount. Well, look, it's been convoluted. It's hard to know exactly what the board's thinking, although the board has come out pretty frequently and said, here's why we think this is a lesser deal, even though you're looking at the numbers of it.

11:04But you're going to hear shareholders who say, we just want, you know, show me the Benjamins. Show me the money on this stuff. And that could lead to shareholder lawsuits. I don't know about the body language from the Trump administration. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes there, because we know he's pretty close with the Ellisons. And I don't know whether... At different times, he said I'm not going to get involved. He said I'm not going to get involved with it, right.

11:27All right. Some breaking news just crossing the wires. Warner Brothers Discovery setting a special meeting date of March 20th. And they're unanimously recommending that shareholders vote for the Netflix merger. But at the same time, it's giving Paramount an opportunity to negotiate a better deal on this, too. They say that they're going to have seven days to come up with their best and final offer. And I'd have to say, Joe, this looks like a pooper get off the pot moment. They keep saying they're going to come up with better offer. They're saying you got seven days to do it. Netflix is giving them these seven days to negotiate that.

12:02But stop saying you're going to address these issues. Come up with a better offer or we're going to move ahead with this vote come March 20th. David Saber joins us now. David, all over the weekend, you know, I saw other financial types all saying, look, there's things under the surface here going on. in terms of Paramount and Warner Brothers, and something is likely to be happening. Can you make sense of what it actually means, David? If you were Kalshi, if it was David Kalshi, would your numbers on Netflix prevail? Would that be going down on Netflix? Yeah, I think it would. Without a doubt, it would be going down.

12:39I think that's reflected in Warner Brothers stock price going up this morning, Joe, as well. They've got their seven days. Now, interestingly, as you just noted, they did not get the could lead to a superior proposal that we might have thought they would, given the enhancements that Paramount made a week ago to its bid that seemed to address many of the concerns the Warner Brothers board had. But they did come up with the seven day. They got the waiver from Netflix. Netflix, of course, continues to have its ability to match whatever it is that Paramount does come up with and come up to, so to speak, in the next seven days.

13:13if they do. As was made clear in the press release, one of their advisors reached out to the board and indicated if they actively engage, as I expect they will this week, they will pay at least 31, if not more, because they indicated that's not best in finals. So I certainly think in answer to that question, your odds have to go down on Netflix winning and up on Paramount. How much you can make your own game? Oh, look, I guess we have it, right? Because, right, we have a partnership with them, don't we? Yeah. So there it is. It's going to be an interesting seven days, you know, and will Paramount be able to address not just price, but also some of these other concerns that remain?

13:52Because even though they seem to address many of them, Warner Brothers has responded by saying, well, you said one thing in the press release announcing the enhancements, but in the merger agreement you offered us, you really haven't changed very much. Now, the Paramount side would say, well, when it comes to things like interim operating agreements, we can't put that language in there. We don't know exactly what it is. We have to talk to you and a few other things. One of the main concerns remains this overall LBO structure question, you know, that the state of the cable industry is such, and particularly for Paramount's cable networks, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the like, that things could continue to decline to such an extent that when you got to close, this would almost no longer be an ongoing entity.

14:33And therefore, how can we believe that they'll even be there at close? Or will they tell their banks to poll because they know it would just make them insolvent if they were to actually buy Warner Brothers at that point. And so they're still trying to say you got to figure something out there. What would that be? Maybe an agreement where Larry Ellison would agree to put in more equity in Paramount if, in fact, it was no longer an ongoing entity at the time of close. But they're getting closer here. Paramount would be to at least getting their chance, Joe, to go best and final. Remember, of course, one of their complaints, whether rightly or wrongly, was, well, you didn't tell us at the end of the process that it was best and final.

15:11So they're getting that chance they've been seeking for a long time. We also know a timeline now, right? We got the 20th for the vote of March, the shareholder vote. So just about a month away. We've got this seven days. And then they'll set up for sort of ISS, which continues to be important, the proxy advisory service to weigh in as well a couple of weeks before that vote. Whomever may be the deal may be with by at that point. David, I remember opinion writers a couple of times said they needed to be convinced why Netflix really wanted those assets so much that it maybe didn't make sense. At the same time, it was made clear over the weekend that Warner Brothers was really walking a fine line because Netflix could bolt at any time.

15:55And that's what they were worried about. You know, they might want to entertain a higher offer, but they certainly don't. That's why they've always said we love Netflix. We want to go with Netflix. Because they definitely don't want Netflix. But look at that stock price. Yeah. If I were Netflix, I'd be, I don't know. I'd be like, take her, she's mine, whatever that old movie was from the 60s. Can we look at the stock price? It has been brutal. Now, they'll say, listen, there'll be any other. Not Warner Brothers, Netflix. Right, Netflix, not Warner Brothers, Netflix. I do the same thing on my show.

16:28Yeah, there you go. You do. Yeah, well, I know. But yeah, it's now 25%. Now, listen, the last bit lately, you know, you had that weird sell off on Friday because of that new app from ByteDance and other concerns about what video is going to look like in terms of A.I. and what you can create. But there's there's no doubt that that stock has been hit hard. And I do wonder how disciplined Netflix will be if they're given the right to match because Paramount has reached an agreement of some kind with Warner Brothers guys. So, you know, we'll see what we get from them. They continue to say nice to have not a must have.

17:02I'm sure what that means exactly, I guess, if you take it seriously. But it's going to be an interesting seven days that should conclude at least who is going to be the buyer here. Not the antitrust side, but at least who is going to be the buyer. Well, we didn't even talk about that. I'm wondering whether there's any undertones from the Trump administration. You know, the conspiracy theorists would think that they might be, I don't know, intimating that, you know, We know how close the Ellisons are to the president. Without a doubt, we've wanted that since the beginning. The president has said monopoly a number of times when he's been discussing Netflix.

17:39But I don't know where that leads, if anywhere. The other thing, and I like to live dangerously, but I've also gotten to the point where, you know, you're there too. You're in the WTF air part of your career, I think. That's fair to say. The future part? We were kind of there when we were young men too, though. We were there when we were young. And now we've got AI. And I found out earlier, I can say that wasn't really me saying that. That was AI. We can start using that. No, but I was going to talk about Versant. And I got a research report that was so exciting for me for what's capable for Versant in terms of, I don't know, new age media.

18:17And it could be transformed into something along the TikTok vein. So at 28, it made me happy to see that. But what I'm getting to is that that stub from from Warner Brothers. I mean, you could say if you were Paramount, you could say, look, that thing that might not that might be worth less than zero. That 17 billion in debt, given the Versant multiple, as I like to point out numerous times, it would be basically functionally insolvent. Now, Warner Brothers in their 14D9 response, it's not the same as Versant. By the way, Versant's a great company. Let me make that very clear, of course. But they say we've got live, you know, we've got free over the air in Europe.

18:57We've got we've got, you know, discovery dot com, the dot com, Subbury Plus, our streaming service. We've got any number of other things that diversify us and make us not deserving, unfortunately, of the three and a half times that Versus is trading at in terms of EBITDA, which is, I think we can both agree, Joe, ridiculous and, of course, incredibly cheap. And maybe you and I should be thinking about how to come. Maybe we can put a group together. You know a lot of rich people. Totally out of whack. You know a lot of rich people. You've already. Right? The thing's trading at less than four times free cash flow, Joe.

19:30You want to talk about an interesting retirement. Right. Preacher meet choir. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to send this to you, though, David. I don't know if you saw it. There are no one knows what the future is going to be, but there is a lot more value. I think we shouldn't really say things like that since we obviously have a horse in the game. But I don't understand what new media is going to look like. I don't know if anyone does. So, you know, what? Oh, it's streaming. Oh, that's really great. You know, it's going to be some I think it's content. It doesn't matter how it's delivered. Does it, Dan?

20:04As long as you get paid for it. I tend to agree with you. And I certainly know none of us know anything. So and nobody does. That's all I keep talking. All right. I've concluded. This was not AI, David. This was this was real. This was real.

20:17David Faber:Next on Squawk Pod, we're remembering Reverend Jesse Jackson's legacy, carrying on the torch from Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement. We hear from a close friend, president and CEO of the National Urban League, Mark Morial. Jesse's influence behind the scenes with politicians, not just Democrats, but Republicans and others, is influenced with corporate America, not just in front of the camera, but behind the scenes, is not widely recognized and widely known.

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22:25David Faber:This is Squawk Pod. We're learning this morning that Reverend Jesse Jackson has died. He was a protege of Martin Luther King Jr. and helped lead the civil rights movement for decades after King's assassination. We are joined this morning by Mark Morial, the president and CEO of the National Urban League. And Mark, it's a sad morning hearing this news. What does it mean to you? Good morning, Becky. Good to be with you always. Good to see you too. What does this news mean to you, Mark? Well, this is important because Reverend Jackson was one of the last living links to Martin Luther King. He, along with Reverend Andrew Young, who, of course, is still vital and working hard every day in Atlanta, and Zanona Clayton, a behind-the-scenes executive who worked with Dr.

23:13King. You know, the connection to Dr. King in a real way, Jesse Jackson represented that. But I think Reverend Jackson's special contribution was the way in which civil rights became part of mainstream American politics with his 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns, which defied the odds and I think paved the way for a Bill Clinton, paved the way for a Barack Obama. But what is not well known about Jesse Jackson is that, for example, in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was a candidate for president, he met with Jesse Jackson. And then Jesse Jackson worked with the then Reagan White House and State Department for the release of Andrew, I can't think of his name, who was a prisoner in Syria when his plane got shot down.

24:09Jesse's influence behind the scenes with politicians, not just Democrats, but Republicans and others, his influence with corporate America, not just in front of the camera, but behind the scenes, is not widely recognized and widely known. I think for Jesse, at the end, he was someone that challenged the status quo, but he was also very much a diplomat in understanding that to move the needle for equal opportunity in civil rights, you had to also be in dialogue with those that sometimes you disagree with. Yeah, that's a very interesting point to make, Mark. And it was the release of Lieutenant Robert Goodman from Syria that he worked behind the scenes with.