Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 11 December 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column, Founded 1932
Ego, greed, and unabashed
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – This is the most transactional president in history. Nothing happens without Donald J. Trump getting his share. It is all ego and greed. Brash and unabashed, he wants a place on Mount Rushmore and a piece of every deal.
It is through lawsuits. Trump is the most litigious president in history. He squeezed $16 million out of CBS for allegedly doctoring a quote to help Kamala Harris look better. It is called editing in the news business, but CBS was anxious to settle, and donating to Trump’s future library was the ticket.
CBS ponied up another $20 million, supposedly to cover reputational damage for a grand total of $36 million.
ABC had paved the way, donating $15 million to a Trump-related foundation, along with having anchor George Stephanopoulos apologize for having said Trump was found liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll when the charges were sexual abuse and defamation.
Money is awarded through the legal process, so it looks fair and square. Trump’s future library is the beneficiary, or a favorite cause, like the big ballroom he is building on the South Lawn of the White House.
Like kudzu climbing everywhere, Trump is expanding his influence to include the iconic Kennedy Center, which he has taken to calling the Trump Kennedy Center, and any other landmarks he can claim, like the recently renamed Trump Institute of Peace.
He has his eye on Hollywood and the media, throwing his chips on the table for the Paramount hostile takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) after Netflix, the streaming giant, made the first move. Trump initially pretended he knew nothing about the Netflix bid, only that CNN, whose parent company is WBD, must be sold “because the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent.”
The Netflix merger would exclude CNN and other cable properties, while the Paramount merger includes the cable network Trump calls fake news. Trump told reporters at the White House that he “probably” will get involved as these deals move forward.
The Paramount deal, brokered by Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, and his son, David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, wants the whole package, and to get it, they upped their proposed stock purchase offer to $108.3 billion, making it one of the biggest hostile takeover attempts in history.
By contrast, the Netflix deal comes in at $82.7 billion.
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, Affinity Partners, is putting up cash for Paramount Skydance along with the sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar, an area of the world Kushner has cultivated.
There is a web of interests between Trump and his family and the oil-rich Arab countries, and it is conflicts of interest in plain sight. After all, the Supreme Court has given him immunity for “official’ actions.
The potential conflicts are many, beginning with Trump’s declaration of likely involvement in any deal. There is much scrutiny ahead, but whatever roadblocks occur, Trump has installed his allies at the relevant regulatory agencies and the Department of Justice.
Whenever we are talking about deals involving billions of dollars, what’s to stop any of these players from throwing in an extra billion for whatever Trump wants?
The real prize here is CNN. Netflix would spin off CNN, but the Paramount Skydance merger sees the cable network as another vehicle to remake the media. Just as CBS made internal changes after its brush with Trump, if CNN becomes part of the Paramount Skydance universe, big changes in how it covers and frames the news would likely follow.
Nothing is settled yet, and a merger of this size and scope can easily take more than a year to finalize, long enough to contemplate what Trump has in mind should his allies acquire, in addition to Fox News, another major news channel.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
© 2025 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND