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This what happens when an insane president takes over the private sector

What’s really at stake in the fight between Netflix and Paramount for Warner Bros Discovery?

Let me make it clear I’m against Netflix acquiring Warner Bros Discovery. That would concentrate corporate power in ways that harm consumers and distort American politics.

But Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros would be just as bad, if not worse.

What’s at stake in all of this is Trump’s — or any president’s — power over the private sector of the American economy.

The back story here is that Warner Bros Discovery owns CNN, and Trump loathes CNN. He frequently complains that its coverage of him has been too negative. He’s termed those running CNN “corrupt and incompetent” and has told top aides he wants new ownership of CNN, along with changes in CNN programming and personnel.

Last week, Trump declared he would involve himself in any proposed sale of Warner Bros, and on Wednesday he said it was “imperative” that the transaction result in the sale of CNN and replacement of its leadership.

Another part of the back story involves Larry Ellison — one of the richest people in America and the largest individual shareholder of Paramount, whose son runs it, and whose operation on Monday launched an unfriendly tender offer for Warner Bros Discovery, to counter Netflix’s friendly offer.

Ellison is an ally of Trump. He has assured Trump and his top aides that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros and CNN, it will get rid of CNN personnel whom Trump apparently detests, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. (Paramount already owns CBS.)

Paramount is portraying itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery because it will have an easier time “getting regulatory approval” of the deal than will Netflix — even though Paramount is relying on financial backing from three Middle East sovereign-wealth funds (along with Jared Kushner).

Who in their right mind would give Middle East wealth funds any leverage over CBS and CNN? Answer: Trump, whose family business is already deeply dependent on financing from the Middle East.

Trump trusts the Ellisons because they pushed Paramount to settle Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and cancel Stephen Colbert — much to Trump’s delight.

Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then promptly approved the $8 billion merger of Paramount with Skydance Media.

Trump’s alliance with Larry Ellison goes back to 2020, when Ellison hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.

Now in charge of Paramount and its CBS division, Larry’s son, David Ellison, has gutted DEI policies at CBS, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role there, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.

The FCC’s Carr has already effectively blessed the Paramount deal. What other “regulatory approval” might be needed? Theoretically, the Federal Trade Commission could object on antitrust grounds. But, as Trump did at the FCC, he planted loyalists at the FTC to do his bidding. (Pam Bondi has asserted that she and the Justice Department’s antitrust division will oversee the merger.)

This past week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Trump had a right to fire an FTC commissioner (the FTC, like the FCC, is supposed to be an “independent” regulatory agency).

Chief Justice John Roberts — who believes that the framers of the Constitution intended a “unitary” executive rather than one whose authority might be shared with independent regulatory agencies established by Congress — suggested during the oral argument that Trump’s removal power should be the norm.

But if Trump’s maneuvers over Warner Bros Discovery has any lessons for the future, the independence of regulatory agencies may be more important than ever before. Otherwise, a wannabe tyrant sitting in the Oval Office can interfere in any business transaction he wishes, to enlarge his own power and stifle criticism.

  • Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
  • Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

'Sesame Street' jumps to Netflix after Trump threatens PBS funding

After 56 years on PBS, Big Bird and friends are finding new life on Netflix following President Donald Trump's threat to pull the plug on publicly-funded media, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"The streaming giant has reached an agreement to broadcast new episodes of 'Sesame Street,' giving the beloved children’s show a home after Warner Bros. Discovery said it was stepping away from the program," the report said.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

Netflix plans to air 90 hours of previous episodes, while new episodes "will also air on PBS stations and PBS Kids the same day they debut on Netflix," the report said.

The Journal quoted Sesame Workshop saying the deal serves “as a unique public-private partnership to enable ‘Sesame Street’ to continue to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder."

Trump signed an executive order at the beginning of the month to end "taxpayer subsidization of biased media."

Read The Wall Street Journal report here.

'Utterly tone deaf': Meghan McCain slams ex-royal Meghan Markle for Netflix trailer

Meghan McCain is slamming Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, for releasing the "highly curated, produced and out of touch" trailer to her new Netflix show during a time of turmoil.

Markle and husband Prince Harry, who famously quit British royal duties to live in the United States, have a $100 million deal with Netflix to produce programs through their company, Archwell Productions. Their current offering, called simply "Polo," received poor reviews and was dubbed "unintentionally hilarious" by the UK's The Guardian.

The aspirational show, called "With Love, Meghan," is set to be released Jan. 15.

ALSO READ: Revealed: The secret Republican plot to disenfranchise millions of voters

According to Forbes, "The nearly two-minute-long trailer released by Netflix on Thursday shows Markle wandering the rows of a meticulously kept garden, choosing fresh flowers, harvesting honey, kneading homemade bread and working in the kitchen with a lineup of famous friends."

McCain posted to X on Friday:

"I was originally a Meghan Markle supporter, I thought she was cool, stylish and refreshing. Like the rest of the world my opinion changed when she disrespected the royal family. Now that she wants to be American again instead of British aristocracy what she seems to forget is Americans want real, raw, uncensored. All of this even in the trailer is highly curated, produced and out of touch. There have been 2 terror attacks in 2 days, major wars raging and Americans can’t pay for groceries. We are a country in rage, uncertainty and intensity right now. This concept is ill advised. I would have told her to do a show helping bring fresh food to food deserts in low income neighborhoods. Do something to help people instead of your ego. This is why the world doesn’t like you, nothing else. Just completely and utterly tone deaf to the moment."

The "lifestyle series" was first announced by Netflix in April. It followed the launch of Markle's lifestyle brand called "American Riviera Orchard," which, according to Forbes, "has yet to produce any content or products."

‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic cashed in on book, toy deals, but still owes Carole Baskin: presidential docs

“Tiger King”-star-turned-presidential-candidate Joe Exotic is earning income in creative ways while in prison — despite facing a hefty liability from his big cat rescue foe Carole Baskin, according to a new federal financial disclosure filing.

Exotic — real name Joseph Maldonado — reported just one liability on his disclosure report, a requirement for all presidential candidates: a “$814,465 judgment from “Big Cat Rescue (Carole Baskin).”

Maldonado is in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, serving a 21-year sentence for two counts of murder-for-hire related to alleged plans to kill Baskin, along with 17 other crimes, including violations of a law prohibiting illegal wildlife trading.

ALSO READ: ‘They blew up my life’: Fox News, a hidden camera and threats to an Indiana school administrator

Baskin and Maldonado’s animosity toward each other as rivals in the big cat rescue industry was the center of the Netflix documentary, “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” that was a cultural touchpoint in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite serving a lengthy prison sentence, Maldonado is bringing in some income from diverse sources, ranging from a book advance to toy payments and music royalties.

The average hourly prison wage is 52 cents per hour, The Marshall Project reported.

Maldonado reported a $35,000 advance from Simon & Schuster for a book payment, a $5,000 advance from a contract with Wilder Toys and $2,000 payment for an NFT promotion from a contract with E&J Holdings.

ALSO READ: Oops, I did it again: This Democratic congresswoman violated a federal law for a second time

Plus, he’s earned $11,197 in royalties from SoSouth Music Publishing, $3,150 in podcast and interview stipends and $1,017 from Facebook views, according to the filing.

Maldonado is running for president as an ultra-long-shot Democratic candidate against President Joe Biden, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and author Marianne Williamson — a field that’s a fraction of the size of the Republican race, which former President Donald Trump leads despite his own legal issues.

Maldonado’s campaign, Joseph Maldonado to Free America, reported raising $10,294.10 with $1,764.49 cash on hand as of June 30, after spending most of the funds on campaign merchandise, according to the Maldonado campaign’s most recent financial filing with the Federal Election Commission.

Maldonado's press secretary, Michael Robison, was not immediately available for comment.


What does Roger Stone think of Trump’s indictment? He has a T-shirt for that.

What’s Roger Stone think of former President Donald Trump’s pending indictment?

While he didn’t pick up his phone when Raw Story rang, the informal – if powerful in ways we’ll never fully knowTrump adviser texted back.

“Here is my comment,” Stone wrote, attaching a black-and-white photo of a “DONALD TRUMP DID NOTHING WRONG!” T-shirt.

Image sent to Raw Story by Roger Stone.

Trump and Stone are united in their legal troubles, which lately overlap.

Stone is unabashedly one of the most notorious, morally-dubious and unflinching (even while under court-ordered gag rules) political provocateurs in American political history. Netflix gave him a documentary – “Get Me Roger Stone” – before a Florida judge gave him a three year prison sentence for lying to Congress and threatening a witness, among other Stone-ian charges.


Trump didn’t like the thought of his favorite fixer locked up, so he publicly lashed out at his own Justice Department. That led to an unheard of televised rebuke from the nation’s top lawyer, his own attorney general, William Barr.

Trump wasn’t having that, either. Over protests from Barr and other lawyers, the former president commuted Stone’s sentence mere days before he was slated to head to the slammer. Trump then pardoned Stone about a month before leaving the White House


With no prison sentence to serve, Stone was free to help plan Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021.

The U.S. House’s select Jan. 6 committee viewed Stone – and his posse of Proud Boys – as playing a particularly venomous role in the biggest attack on American democracy since President Richard Nixon put himself above the law.

In Stone’s eyes, Nixon’s mistake was resigning. Perhaps if he had whipped up some “Nixon did nothing wrong!” tees, American politics would have been different decades ago. Just the way Stone seems to like it — embers, ashes and all.

Netflix subscribers at record high, password crackdown coming

Netflix says its new ad-subsidized subscription tier is starting out better than expected, and that it will begin a broad rollout of paid plans for people who share passwords with other households

San Francisco (AFP) - Netflix on Tuesday said that its number of subscribers hit a record high 232.5 million in the first quarter of the year and that its nascent ad-supported tier was faring well.

The streaming television giant reported a quarterly profit of $1.3 billion, in line with expectations, but said it had delayed a broad crackdown on sharing of account passwords "to improve the experience for members."

Netflix said it expects to begin rolling out its options for paid password sharing this quarter instead.

"It's clear that the company wants to manage any fallout from the new strategy," said Third Bridge analyst Jamie Lumley.

That means some membership and revenue benefits resulting from the move were postponed, Netflix said in a letter to shareholders.

Netflix has dabbled with "borrower" or "shared" accounts in a few markets, but plans to roll them out in the United States and elsewhere this month, co-chief executive Greg Peters said in a streamed earnings interview.

Netflix said it is taking time to make sure subscribers have seamless access to the service away from home or on various devices such as tablets, TVs or smartphones.

"We learned from this last set of launches about some improvements we can do," Peters said.

"It was better to take a little bit of extra time to incorporate those learnings and make this transition as smooth as possible for members."

And while a new ad-subsidized subscription tier at Netflix is in its early days, engagement is above initial expectations and Netflix has seen "very little switching from our standard and premium plans."

Market tracker Insider Intelligence forecast that Netflix will bring in $770 million in ad revenue from the new tier this year, and that revenue figure will top $1 billion next year.

As growth at Netflix cooled last year, the Silicon Valley based streaming company focused on creating a lower priced subscription tier with advertising.

Netflix also set out to nudge people watching for free with shared passwords to begin paying for the service without alienating subscribers.

"This account sharing initiative helps us have a larger base of potential paying members and grow Netflix long term," said co-chief executive Ted Sarandos.

Future of TV

For the first time ever, US adults will spend more time this year watching digital video on platforms such as Netflix, TikTok and YouTube than viewing traditional television, Insider Intelligence has forecast.

The market tracker expects "linear TV" to account for less than half of daily viewing for the first time ever.

"This milestone is driven by people spending more and more time watching video on their biggest and smallest screens, whether it's an immersive drama on a connected TV or a viral clip on a smartphone," Insider Intelligence principal analyst Paul Verna said in a release.

Netflix and YouTube are "neck and neck" leaders when it comes to digital video audience attention, according to Insider Intelligence.

Netflix planned to continue spending about $17 billion annually on shows and films, with that amount perhaps climbing after next year.

"Netflix subscriber growth shows that the streaming wars are still on," said analyst Lumley.

"The company is ahead of where it was this time last year but still clearly facing the pressure from all the players in this crowded space."