Trump Fires the Antitrust Uno Reverse After Netflix Mistook Oval Office Warmth for a Warner Blessing

“Don’t worry David, I won’t let it happen… not on my watch…” -Trump, probably

Well well well… look who woke up and chose antitrust thunder-daddy. On Friday, Netflix hit “Add to Cart” on Warner Bros. like my wife buying something on Amazon… except this prime purchase costs $72 billion, balloons to $82 billion with debt, and comes with HBO, HBO Max, and 100 years of cinematic IP.

By Sunday night, Trump was strutting down the Kennedy Center red carpet, looked at reporters, and all but said: “Yeah… that deal? Might be a problem. And I’ll be involved.” In other words: “Respect my authoritah.”

Normally presidents don’t micromanage antitrust approvals. Historically, they leave that to the Justice Department, economists, regulators, and the occasional academic who still writes 400-page PDFs about market concentration. 

But historically, presidents also don’t call CNN “garbage on stilts,” don’t negotiate mergers by getting studios to pay $16 million to their future presidential library, and don’t blurt out “quiet, piggy” like they’re scolding a child at a county fair. So yes, history is on break.

(Source: NBC News)

Trump told reporters Netflix’s mega-merger “has to go through a process.” Translation: “I’m the process.” Then he added that Netflix’s market share is “very big,” and absorbing Warner Bros. (HBO, HBO Max, the Harry Potter vault, the Batman vault, the entire cinematic childhood of millennials) “makes it go up a lot.” This is antitrust analysis delivered like Yelp feedback.

Let’s not forget Ted Sarandos made the sacred trek to the Oval Office back in November, the same way studio execs once trekked to Weinstein’s corner office… equal parts hopeful and terrified. He sat down with Trump, probably complimented the drapes and tried to pitch “Please don’t nuke our merger” as gracefully as possible. 

Trump said afterward, “He’s fantastic,” which could mean anything from “I liked him” to “I don’t remember who that was.” Sarandos walked out feeling like he had a new friend. Then Sunday happened. Oops.

The politics get even swampier. Warner Bros. chose Netflix over Paramount Skydance… a bidder with Trump-world connections. Now Trump’s hinting the merger “could be a problem.” Gee. What are the odds. 

Paramount Skydance is already screaming “THE PROCESS WAS BIASED,” and insiders think a higher bid (or a hostile one) may be incoming. And that’s before Europe and every other government with an opinion on tech dominance gets involved. This thing is about to be under more scrutiny than a Tesla earnings call.

Netflix, meanwhile, is preparing to argue that regulators shouldn’t worry because they compete with YouTube and TikTok… meaning the biggest streaming platform on Earth is about to claim it’s being bullied by teenagers lip-syncing Olivia Rodrigo and unboxing K-beauty hauls. And somehow, it might actually work.

But if I was Netflix, I’d be a little nervous right now. Trump and Ellison are close… close enough that Trump actually handed him TikTok after that armed-robbery-level standoff with China. So no, this isn’t over yet.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon, Tesla, and Netflix as mentioned in the article.