“I’ve been called by both sides,” Donald said in the NBC Nightly News sitdown
The bid war has been going on for some time. There are possibilities of the US, the UK, and the EU regulators getting involved. Even President Donald Trump spoke about it.
But now, President Donald Trump, in a recent interview, opted to stay out of the bidding war between the streaming giant Netflix and the media conglomerate Paramount Skydance over their WBD deal.
“I haven’t been involved,” Donald told NBC Nightly News.
Trump said. “I’ve been called by both sides. It’s the two sides, but I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.” As per the recommendations of WBD leadership, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had visited Trump in the Oval Office shortly before Netflix put down its offer to WBD.
Trump also stated that, “There’s a theory that one of the companies is too big and it shouldn’t be allowed to do it, and the other company is saying something else.”
Netflix had almost acquired the WBD dealfor its film studio and streaming service for $72 billion when Paramount Skydance made a hostile takeover bidfor all of WBD with an enterprise value of $108 billion.
When Ted appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, he claimed his meeting with Trump “was not specifically to talk about the deal.” Ted also stated that he had confidence in the case and it would be run by the Department of Justice, as per The New York Times.
A Utah Republican, Sen. Mike Lee at the hearing said, “All told, one might say that Netflix seeks to become the one platform to rule them all, or at least to exercise a significant amount of market dominance.”
Mike also stated that, “The merger raises numerous antitrust concerns, in a nutshell, consolidating both production and distribution power.”
Anyway, as the US president said, “They’re beating the hell out of each other — and there’ll be a winner.”
Last stock status (02-04-26):
Pic Credits: Google/ChatGPT
