Elizabeth Warren says ‘frenzy’ of mergers under Trump could be reversed | Elizabeth Warren
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has warned that mergers approved by the Trump administration — including a deal that would put America’s two largest news organizations under the control of a family sympathetic to the president — could be undone by a future administration.
“We’re going to have new players in Washington after 2028, and everyone involved in this merger frenzy right now is aware of that,” Warren said in an interview.
“Today’s deals are taking place in the shadow of a coming tsunami of political anger against these giant corporations who think they can mow down industry after industry, raise prices, suck profits, and never be held accountable.”
“By 2028” (the year of the next presidential election) “they may realize they miscalculated terribly,” Warren said.
The Massachusetts senator’s comments come after the justice department earlier this month approved the $111 billion merger between Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN and HBO, and Paramount Skydance, which includes CBS News and is controlled by the Ellison family.
The deal raised concerns that Donald Trump’s longtime colleague Larry Ellison and his son David might reorient CNN’s coverage to favor the president. David Ellison, who took control of CBS News last year in the merger that created Paramount Skydance, appointed Bari Weiss, a conservative commentator with no experience in television, as editor-in-chief.
The news network has since been dogged by allegations of political bias, including on 60 Minutes, the most-watched program in television news. At CNN, the growing possibility of the Ellisons taking control of that network and potentially placing Weiss in a leadership role has sparked concern within the network.
Warren warned that if the networks were indeed merged under the Ellisons, it would mean “there’s a final decision maker who decides what’s important and what’s not important” at the nation’s two largest news channels.
“A bigger problem is that Ellison himself wants to put a spin on the news, which means that where Americans go for news, they can increasingly rely less on hearing independent, unbiased reporting and increasingly hear a canned version of the world that is comfortable for the new management of those news organizations,” he said.
State attorneys general are reportedly planning to file a lawsuit regarding the deal but have not yet announced it. Warren said she wouldn’t “infer too much” from the delay because bringing such a case would require significant resources and coordination among states deciding “how to pool their efforts to oppose a giant like Ellison.”
Beyond the media, the Trump administration also approved Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion acquisition of US Steel; Omnicom’s $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic to create the world’s largest advertising agency; and a $35 billion deal between Capital One and Discover Financial.
In a speech at the Open Market Institute in Washington, the senator accused the Trump administration of ignoring the harmful effects of the merger wave on consumers in exchange for political donations.
“As soon as Trump took office, companies came knocking on the door of the White House to get their pro-monopoly deals approved,” Warren said. “Ever wonder why companies keep donating millions of dollars to Trump’s gold-plated ballroom, arch, or library? This sounds a lot like a pay-to-play scheme.”
Warren is not the only Senate Democrat threatening to roll back mergers approved by the Republican administration. In February, Senator Chris Murphy warned in a social media post that Paramount, the top bidder for Warner Bros. Discovery following Netflix’s departure, “should enjoy the growing news monopoly they have while they have it, because when the Democrats regain power we will tear apart these anti-democratic information conglomerates.”
In November, voters will vote in midterm elections that could see Democrats regain control of the Senate and House of Representatives. Warren, who represents Massachusetts and is now the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, said returning to the majority could offer her party a limited opportunity to retaliate against the Trump administration’s merger policy.
“It’s going to be difficult to change what we can do with Donald Trump still in the White House and able to veto anything he doesn’t like,” Warren said. But he noted that antitrust law allows for retroactive splitting of mergers “if they are later determined to violate those laws.”
