Paramount And CBS Willing To Kiss Trump’s Ass In Exchange For Merger Approvals

For years many press outlets (and contrarian engagement pundits like Matt Stoller) tried to argue that the Trump GOP was now “serious about antitrust reform,” “reining in corporate power,” or “holding Big Tech Accountable.” The argument was that because Trumpism claims to be “populist,” it could be convinced to implement serious anti-corporatist antitrust reform that would help the public.

Of course that’s a naïve, violent misread of how authoritarianism works; kleptocrats are only interested in leveraging government power against corporate power if it’s of specific benefit to them personally.

Case in point: Last October, Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit tramples the First Amendment and editorial discretion.

But CBS and Paramount have a planned merger with Skydance pending review by Trump regulators. So, displaying a complete lack of any backbone, they’re already considering settling the case to get merger approval. It’s embarrassing and feckless, but a perfect example of what corporate media’s “journalistic integrity” and the right wing’s “dedication to free speech” is going to look like the next four years.

Trump’s pick for FCC boss Brendan Carr had already been threatening CBS with a blocked merger if it dared engage in the act of journalism, causing Libertarian outlets like Reason — who, let’s be clear, usually adore Carr’s dismantling of consumer protection standards — to suddenly discover he’s no friend of free speech or logic.

The right wing news ecosystem had been priming this particular pump since last fall, with outlets like the New York Post running articles like this one, claiming that Paramount and CBS’s merger with Skydance will be blocked because CBS simply has “too much liberal bias.”

The great joke here is that, as media critics like Parker Molloy have noted, CBS had been responding to authoritarianism by shifting their editorial slant ever rightward for years already (just like the LA Times, NPR, the Washington Post, and many other self serving companies). Their reward for becoming more feckless? More harassment by authoritarians, which is usually how these things work.

That’s going to be the thrust of Trump “antitrust reform”: kiss the ring and you might get what you want. Challenge Trump and you can expect the authority of the state (or what’s left of it after Trump 2.0 gets done gutting all regulatory independence and firing government workers randomly) to be leveraged against you.

Anybody telling you that Trumpism values free speech or wants to rein in corporate power are confused, bullshitting you, or selling you dodgy supplements. It’s not populism, it’s pseudo-populism to try and convince rubes to root against their own best self interests. It’s not “anti-corporatism” or “antitrust reform,” it’s the reckless, inconsistent weaponizing of government power to benefit kleptocrats personally.

For example, Trump and the GOP didn’t saber rattle against “Big Tech” because they genuinely care about corporate power or protecting free speech, they did so to bully tech companies away from moderating race-baiting right wing propaganda, a cornerstone of modern GOP party power (lying endlessly is necessary when your real world policies, like broad tax cuts for rich brats or the dismantling of female reproductive rights, are broadly unpopular).

The first Trump administration didn’t sue Time Warner and AT&T to protect consumers, they did so because Rupert Murdoch asked them to. And after T-Mobile lavished the Trump administration with praise and hotel stays, Trump’s “antitrust enforcer” Makim Delrahim worked in his free time to make sure their merger got approved; the FCC didn’t even read about the deal impact before approval.

Yet somehow you’ve got “progressive” folks like Matt Stoller, and plenty of other people who should know better, constantly insisting that Trumpism is genuine populism that can be leveraged for the greater good.

It’s nonsense; authoritarians are relentlessly self serving bullshit artists, collaboration with them is always a lose-lose scenario, and no matter how routinely companies obey in advance and fecklessly kiss the ring to gain daddy’s approval, it’s simply never going to be enough.