Trump Puts CNN on the Block, Fairly and Legally

This past week, Congress held a hearing where it debated Netflix’s pending deal to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery — the company that owns HBO, the Max streaming platform, and a whole lot more.

Members didn’t mince words. They argued that the federal government should block the sale because it would give Netflix, a company they accused of being overtly woke, a near monopoly in the streaming industry.

President Donald Trump has had a lot to say on this subject, too. He doesn’t usually get credit for restraint, but his recent comment that whoever acquires WBD should also inherit CNN qualifies. It was restrained, reasonable, and long overdue.

Multiple bidders for WBD have explored different deal structures. The president’s concern is that Netflix, the company that WBD’s board ultimately chose, expressed interest in only acquiring WBD’s studios, streaming assets, and film libraries while carving CNN out of the transaction.

Trump’s point was simple and far less heated than the rhetoric coming out of Congress: no carve-outs, no special handling.

Because experts state that Netflix acquiring WBD would present market share and antitrust concerns, the president and his antitrust enforcers have every right to put conditions on the sale. They can ensure the network becomes fairer and more balanced, all while ensuring that WBD is sold to a company that is serious about protecting the consumer welfare standard, the long-held antitrust pillar that ensures fair and adequate competition in every consumer-facing industry.

CNN didn’t become insufferable because it criticizes Republicans. It became insufferable because it stopped doing journalism. Instead of chasing facts wherever they lead, it has become a narrative maintenance operation, eager only to amplify stories that fit its worldview.

That pattern has become impossible to miss.

When independent journalists surface credible allegations involving prominent Democrats, CNN often looks the other way. When stories gain momentum outside legacy media circles, CNN’s default response often appears to be silence, perhaps hoping the news hooks die out before the network is forced to acknowledge them.

CNN’s ratings collapse shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. It followed years of transparent bias, performative outrage, and an unwillingness to grapple with real journalism anymore. The network now endlessly talks about “threats to democracy” while steadily hollowing out its own credibility.

That’s the context for Trump’s remark on the need for CNN to be sold, and why it’s so important.

Critics will frame this as authoritarian meddling. It’s not.

No one is calling for CNN to be shut down, regulated, or silenced. All Trump is saying is that no company is immune from our nation’s antitrust laws — and that his administration has every right to enforce the consumer welfare standard before approving any sale of WBD.

Media organizations lecture everyone else about transparency and consequences. CNN has spent years doing exactly that while exempting itself. When it gets major stories wrong, corrections are muted. When it misses consequential news, there’s no reckoning. When trust in the media collapses, the audience is blamed.

Trump’s line in the sand punctures that arrogance.

An ownership change could be the best thing that ever happened to CNN. New bosses that demand credibility, not ideological conformity, might force the network to rediscover the basics it abandoned long ago: reporting over commentary, facts over framing, curiosity over certainty.

So don’t believe the critics. Trump isn’t doing anything wrong. All he is doing is enforcing the law and — in doing so — protecting free competition and the free press.

Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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