DOJ Approves Paramount Deal to Buy Warner Bros.

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1:00Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melborough, and we begin tracking some major breaking news. The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, has basically approved or cleared the way for that massive and controversial media merger that you've probably heard so much about. We're talking about the over$100 billion deal by Paramount, controlled by MAGA allies, the Ellisons, to acquire CNN, HBO, and the entire Warner Brothers empire. Now, the DOJ conducted what they called eight months of review, and they say on the evidence, they've concluded that this deal is not likely to have harm to competition or American consumers.

1:40So that is the formal process. But lurking behind all this are all the big names that you've been hearing about. Scott Pelley at 60 Minutes, The Colbert Show ending the overt demands for censorship and favoritism by President Trump, his FCC chair and others to try to use or abuse their government oversight, their power to regulate and to control potentially the outcome of these mergers to demand or shake down the coverage they say they deserve or want. So in other words, what I'm reporting on tonight is really the next step in this ongoing process. For those wondering why the clash at CBS seemed so big or why the new CBS owners, Paramount, seemed so intent on making changes like ending Colbert and changing 60 Minutes, which has resulted in the ousting of top talent there and many producers and seen the clash we've been covering over the last two weeks.

2:35Well, that is context for this. the merger brings together the movie studio, the streaming service like HBO Max, Paramount Plus, which is part of that original company I mentioned, CBS, the news division there that's been roiled by crises and complaints from longstanding journalists there who've been nonpartisan and independent. In other words, this isn't like a liberal thing and a culture clash with, say, MAGA ownership, but more of an independent journalism thing. 60 Minutes, of course, the most watched news program in America, clashing with what they say were overt demands to be more MAGA-friendly and, according to Scott Pelley, inject falsehoods into coverage.

3:14CNN would also now come under this one company, led by David Ellison, the son of one of the richest people in the world, on a night where there's new developments on that. We're going to talk later in the broadcast about a billionaire turned trillionaire, Elon Musk, but Ellison is the son of the MAGA billionaire, Larry Ellison, And we are looking at the financial and business and political intersection at the top of the world economy and questions for the DOJ over whether this was in some way pay to play or even something unethical or illegal. I want to bring in Che Comanduri, a veteran political strategist who has followed this issue closely.

3:55Che, I could, of course, bring on an antitrust expert or regulator if we thought that the main point in the story was whether the DOJ's antitrust analysis on harming consumers was accurate or not. But as you know, and I think a lot of our viewers know, and as 60 Minutes vet Scott Pelley and others have said, that's not really what this story is about. What is this story about and what matters in the Trump administration moving forward on this merger today? Well, it's about the oligarchy striking back. You know, we've heard all about how Trump is weakened. But the reality is, is that he has as his allies the richest men in the world.

4:39And one thing that Trump wanted was control of CNN. Now, if you look at Warner Brothers Discovery, CNN is a very, very, very small part of that business. But for Donald Trump, that was the entire his entire interest in the deal. Donald Trump and the DOJ weren't interested in who was going to be the next Batman. They were very much interested in who gets to be the CNN White House correspondent. president, you know, I think that's a position that Caitlin Collins currently has, who anchors those shows, what the content of those programs are, what the coverage of the administration will be. This is something that Donald Trump believes is crucial to his and MAGA's future success, especially at a time when his approval ratings are declining.

5:29You know, when your approval ratings are declining, when things aren't going well, you can still turn on Fox and hear a lot of good news about Trump. Now, if you can replicate that on CNN and you can diminish and downsize the voices in opposition to Trump or the criticism of moves of the Trump administration, that gives Trump a lot more power and cards to play in American politics. And that's what this deal was all about. We had Scott Pelley, the veteran 60 Minutes anchor up on the screen, and we can put him back up in a minute to remind people because all of the the corporate names, it's like a skit.

6:08You know, it's like Cable Vision, Paramount Plus, HBO Max. You know, the point is in politics and news and democracy that people like Scott Pelley, who clearly had a 37 year track record. He says these new owners, the people who today are getting a bigger merger, asked him to inject falsehoods that favored the Trump administration. He says it was MAGA bias. He said it came in and he was being pressed to do things that he'd never been pressed to do in over three decades at 60 Minutes. That story, the Colbert story, do you see that as relevant in the Trump administration now going along with the deal?

6:46And is that then a precursor for CNN? Yeah, I mean, I think it's more than relevant. I think that's an absolute precedent that has been set by the Ellisons to show Trump what they could have done, what they could do to CNN. The stories that we have heard out of CBS News will be peanuts compared to the stories that will probably come out from CNN once this deal, if this deal actually goes through. I know there's some lawsuits with California. This might not be fully signed, sealed, delivered, but as far as the Trump DOJ is concerned, it is. And that is exactly where we're going to be heading. We're going to be heading to more incidents like the kind that Scott Pelley has seen.

7:28And in addition, I would also remind viewers that, you know, when this deal was going through, it was very striking to me that David Ellison would advertise to shareholders that unlike Netflix, he could give merger approval. He could give government approval for all the moves that this new company would make, that that was a real selling point that he had over Netflix, that he could say, look, Donald Trump is an ally with me. I can pick up the phone, call him in the Oval Office, and whatever we need to have happen will happen because I have that kind of relationship with the president. That was something that Netflix was unable to advertise.

8:11And that led to Ellison being very successful in his acquisition of this company. Exactly and many remember the Netflix chief was actually at the White House the day that some of this shifted and they had the photos of him walking out and in a system that's working well you want the government to protect rules and transparency in the market but not be as conservatives used to criticize Jay not be picking winners and losers. Here, that's gone out the window. There's nothing conservative or free market fundamental about this. You have a shakedown attitude from Trump and Carr. You have some people, the DOJ, who then try to pretty it back up.

8:50The statement we got, I will mention, had the usual verbiage and language about the review of market power, consumers. It may be that consumers were going to get a similar deal from similar giant mergers. Whether it was good or not, it may be that Netflix or this streaming synergy with Paramount was similar. But against that backdrop, you have this shakedown. And then you said that's because Trump doesn't like the actual stories that are being reported in the real world going into the midterms. And that sort of brings us to the next piece. Che, I want you to stick with me and we're going to bring in one more guest because the Warner merger news is breaking late in the day, you know, Friday night.

9:28Sometimes you get news on a Friday night. And so we wanted to bring that as it breaks. But the other context, which Che mentioned, is how Trump is ending another week of losses. We have photos and imagery from Washington that shows the limits of Trump's power. This is the live picture at the Kennedy Center. You have the scaffolding. Workers are going to be removing Trump's name because no matter how much he wishes he was the kind of king, autocrat, or leader who could decree something, and that's all it would be, we still have a system with the rule of law. And while it's been strained and stressed, and I've told you that, and I'm not here to tell you everything works perfectly, this delisting of this ham-handed effort by Trump to slap his name on the Kennedy Center speaks to the fact that the courts on matters large, medium, and sometimes small and vanity-related are still the final word in this country, even if MAGA and Trump folks wish they weren't.

10:18It follows another ruling from a federal judge about removing his name. The Trump DOJ is trying to see if they can find a way around this, but that's the current law of the land. And the growing legal pushback has changed what Trump can get away with. is DOJ dealt a fresh loss on that criminal fund where they already got frozen in court. Now a federal judge says they're blocking any such fund. And that could limit even the backdoor efforts we've read about this week where they said, well, what if we call it a different name or channel it through a different place? Well, if there's a judicial order blocking it, that will prevent the federal government from releasing those funds, period.

10:55Now, Trump's DOJ gets a week to enter a clear and unambiguous declaration that the fund is dead, that must be signed, note this, by the Treasury secretary and the head of the DOJ. That's putting multiple officials on record. Of course, Treasury is where the money would come from, typically. And DOJ, if they try to use that other fund I mentioned, well, they both would be barred from it. It is a huge setback for Blanche. Ten days ago, he was the one trying to dodge on what the plans were, even as this thing was flailing in court.

11:27Juanita Tolliver:You established it in writing, so it just makes sense to rescind it in writing. I think a lot of Americans, both sides of the aisle, are concerned about it, and it would restore a lot of trust about this issue. Okay, I'm not committing to doing anything in writing. I'm not committing. Okay. I mean, I'll take it under advisement. A judge is basically telling Blanche's DOJ to stop with the games. If you've followed our coverage this week, remember I mentioned that in typical times, the DOJ gets some trust, but increasingly they don't trust the DOJ. Then there's the White House UFC edition. Take a listen.

12:051 p.m., folks beginning to line up over toward the mall and over toward the White House, and then a line of perhaps strong to severe thunderstorms around 2, 3 o 'clock. Once that batch moves on out, it appears that we're in the clear, but it does not necessarily mean it's going to be the case. Another round of strong to severe thunderstorms are possible at that point with gusty winds and heavy downpours. And by 9, 10 o 'clock, that's when things should begin to clear on out. If you don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows, the takeaway there is there is at least a risk of a rain on Trump's parade, so to speak.

12:42Apologies to Dillard. More seriously, though, is the question of corruption. The White House has talked a lot about how Trump's not personally involved in stuff, but of course, he does own underlying company stock in the UFC. They've been donating to Trump. The corporate logos are everywhere. Polymarket, crypto.com. Polling shows Americans disapprove of this. Only a quarter think that this whole distraction, vanity, sort of fun fight on the White House lawn makes any sense while we are at war with gas prices surging. So you take it all together. And of course, the stories are related. We didn't know when we were preparing our broadcast tonight that we would get this merger news so late in the day Friday.

13:25But that merger news, as our guest Che pointed out, has to do with whether the government is being run in a fair way for your benefit as the citizen taxpayer, or whether it is in collusion with other rich, powerful entities that are designed to extract value from both the government, tax dollars, and our country at your detriment. That's not a left or right point. It might be, I guess, vaguely about fairness or populism. But that's a lot of what's happening, even as Donald Trump insists that this period of his presidency should focus on promoting himself and his name on the buildings and his distraction.

14:03Reality show gambits when Americans are increasingly fed up. I want to bring back Che and our friend Juanita Tolliver. We're going to get into this when we return in just 90 seconds.

14:15Juanita Tolliver:This summer, FanDuel is the best place to bet on goals. including equalizers uh-huh balls yep headers every goal is worth more on fan so let there be goals new customers get 350 in bonus bets guaranteed when you bet five dollars for seven days 21 plus and present in select states first online real money wager only minimum five dollar wager required for seven consecutive days five dollar first deposit required bonus issue does non-withdrawable bonus bets which expires seven days after receipt restrictions apply see full terms at fanduel.com sportsbook gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET Monday.com AI agents took over my work.

14:48And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics.

15:06Juanita Tolliver:From the field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob Soborov. Premieres tomorrow, 10 a.m. Eastern on MSNOW. busy friday night in washington beyond i'm back with jay and juanita uh juanita your views i just ran through a lot but but what's on your mind here tonight like ari i i feel like we're in an episode of the simpsons and we know they predicted a lot of moments they predicted a trump presidency including the tacky escalator did they predict a cage match ari at the white house i need somebody to go back through the Simpson archives because this all feels absolutely absurd.

15:45Juanita Tolliver:It feels absurd to see this happening. It feels absurd for the timing of it happening. But we know Trump loves to use taxpayer dollars to throw himself a birthday party, just like he did last year with the military parade, which very few people attended. I'm looking at this UFC event, though, and all I see is dollar signs are not just the corporate sponsors you mentioned in Trump's stakes at UFC or the fact that I believe one of the crypto funds that is sponsoring this event has ties to one of Trump's sons as an advisor as well. But I'm also thinking about the taxpayer dollars wrapped up in this.

16:20Juanita Tolliver:AP reported at least$60 million from taxpayer funds are going to this and coordination across seven federal agencies to pull this off, all the way from the FAA to the Secret Service. And this is at a moment when Donald Trump has repeatedly said, I don't care about taxpayers' wallets when I make decisions. I don't care about the issues they're facing. And so I'm looking at this and the other number you highlighted, this is deeply unpopular. 51 % unapproval, I think, was on the screen earlier. No one wants this. People do not want this. They certainly don't want their taxpayer dollars used for it.

16:58Juanita Tolliver:And so I'm curious to see how this is yet another thing, another stunt that Trump uses to weigh down Republicans as we head into November. And that really goes to what you see on the screen. People don't want this. People are recoiling against the economy. That's the reality versus the reality show, which Che mentioned in terms of the White House obsession about trying to buy, cajole, or pressure coverage that's different than discussing these problems. And so Che, Take a listen to how some of it, though, is playing on Fox. Trey, what do you say to our viewers who love Donald Trump and they support him?

17:37Juanita Tolliver:They trust him. They believe he's talking to the right people and making the right moves. But they're tired of this and they see that the midterms are around the corner. They want our economy to get back on track and our gas prices to drop. You know, there's a kind of a little hint of awareness there, Trey. And then the Republican senators who are leaving the body are stronger. And then the blind quotes from the less courageous anonymous folks are even stronger, including ending the week with the hunt for the leaker who dared say that the Trump folks were rattled by Epstein. What do you see in all of this after another tough week for them?

18:19Yeah, it's been a tough week, and I think they know it's going to get tougher. And I thought that that question was rather strange where, you know, the Fox the Fox morning people were saying, hey, you know, what do you say to people who love Trump and really believe in him, but kind of don't believe in him anymore? Kind of think that maybe this isn't so this isn't so right and kind of think that, like, you know, the gas prices are are high and the food prices are high. What do you say to them? You know, it was almost like an acknowledgement that things are not going well. And as much as Trump wants to say that things are going great, they simply are not.

18:58And, you know, the cage match is a big part of this. You know, this is America's 250th birthday. And if you just compare the feeling around the bicentennial and the centennial, if you go back historically and just look at it, you know, the idea of doing a cage match, you know, it didn't come out of The Simpsons, but it does come out of the movie Idiocracy, where something like that actually does occur. And that's, you know, when people see that, even if you like Trump, you've got to think something's off and something's really wrong in the way that America is celebrating its 250th birthday. Juanita?

19:34Juanita Tolliver:I also want to highlight this isn't about America 250, even though the posters outside the cage match do say Freedom 250. This is on Trump's birthday. This is a gift to himself. And I'm thinking about that in terms of whatever gains come from the UFC where he owns stocks. I'm thinking about whatever games go to Paramount Plus, which I believe is live streaming this event. Like, I think that that's what it comes down to. But when you talk about things being explicitly wrong, there's only so much you can butt up against reality. And that's what I think that Fox host was getting to the fact that people can't put food on their table.

20:12Juanita Tolliver:They can't pay their rent. They are struggling to find jobs as layoffs continue. you. There's no way, there's no message that you can counteract the reality and the struggle that people are feeling. And I saw some coverage on MSNOW earlier this week where three-time Trump voters were like, we know he doesn't care about us. We know now. And so they're feeling the consequences of a Trump administration. They're feeling the reality that some of this could have been avoided. Gas prices didn't need to shoot up if Trump and Netanyahu didn't start a war with Iran. Grocery prices and inflation might be in a different place if Trump had started a tariff war that destabilized an entire global economy.

20:50Juanita Tolliver:And so they're seeing and feeling the impact of Trump in a way, sadly, that is truly harming them on a day-to-day basis, that a message on Fox News is not going to be able to penetrate. And it's something that I'm sure is going to be going with them into the polls as we see those enthusiasm gaps between Democratic and Republican voters where Republicans are at a deficit and independent voters are peeling away from Republican support. And that is a massive red flag for every Republican on the ballot, because we know Trump's not on the ballot, but he will absolutely continue to drag them down ahead of these midterms with every stunt that he pulls.

21:26I want it in, Che. Thank you. As we follow that news and the breaking news, it's Friday. We got a lot cooking, including by the end of the hour, thinking through what it means for New York to have such a liberal mayor. Together, we will tell a new story of our city. Eight and a half million New Yorkers will speak this new era into existence. It will be loud. It will be different. It will feel like the New York we love. A push for the future while we are watching a different future unfold today. protests against Elon Musk in New York. We have the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on this massive news in the markets today.

22:11SpaceX launching, it's worth$2 trillion, which makes Trump on, I should say, Musk on paper, the first trillionaire. Krugman, on what that means for you, next.

22:26We're turning to the biggest story, maybe on Earth and in space tonight, Certainly a big story on Wall Street, but it also matters for our society and our politics. We have, for the first time, a trillionaire on Earth. Elon Musk is the world's first trillionaire on paper because his rocket company SpaceX launched on the stock market today. This is actually the largest IPO ever. And that's, of course, where they go from being a private company with all their investors to being a publicly traded stock. If you're curious how it went, they opened at a hefty valuation of about$150, rose about 20%. And the company, like other tech companies, to be fair, is valued way more for any expectations or hope about its future than its current holdings, revenue, and business model.

23:18As for the pricing, here's Jimmy Kimmel. with that kind of money, Elon could buy every NFL team, all of them, and he'd still have$773 billion left, which he could use to buy all 30 Major League Baseball teams, every NBA team, every Wendy's, every Target store, the Beatles' entire music catalog. He could buy Nike, Macy's, and every Hyundai Elantra ever produced and would still have$260 billion,

23:45Juanita Tolliver:$50 million left over. That's a type of storytelling. the obvious implication, the question, the premise is, is it too much for any one person to have, even if you think capitalism works great and people should be rewarded for the risk and labor that goes into these kind of projects. In other words, this isn't one of those obvious left-right capitalism-socialism things. This might just be a more baseline thing. Now, there are all kinds of ways people are reacting. There were protesters going after Musk in New York. There's questions about this era of ultra-affluence, which correlates with widening wealth inequality.

24:27From a moral perspective, this kind of wealth in a world where people could afford to eat might hit different. We have a stark wealth gap with great poverty even in rich nations, to say nothing, of the struggling nations. The top 1 % of American households now has a third of the wealth. And that's somewhere near what the entire bottom 90 % holds. And then think about this. In the United States, our highest tax bracket has been set at 37%. That's higher than if you make, say, less money. But think about how antiquated the actual amount of money is. The highest basic step is just over half a million dollars, technically exactly$640 ,000.