Trump Ally Promises CNN Overhaul If Paramount Succeeds in Warner Bros. Takeover
Billionaire tech titan Larry Ellison and his son, David Ellison, are now at the center of a political and media battle that could reshape the American news landscape — and finally bring long-awaited accountability to CNN, a network President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly blasted for years.
Sources familiar with the discussions say the Ellisons have privately assured President Trump that, should Paramount Global succeed in its massive $108 billion hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), they plan to carry out sweeping reforms at CNN from top to bottom. The reassurance comes as Netflix pushes its competing $72 billion agreement to carve off Warner’s film and HBO properties — a proposal that explicitly leaves CNN out of the deal and would spin the embattled network into a standalone entity.
Paramount’s bid, by contrast, includes CNN in full — and insiders say the Ellisons have made clear they intend to remake the network into something fundamentally different from the left-leaning, activist outlet it has become.
According to The Wall Street Journal, David Ellison told senior Trump officials in closed-door meetings that under Paramount ownership, CNN would face a “fundamental cultural and editorial overhaul.” His father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, reportedly raised the possibility of removing high-profile anchors such as Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar — both longtime antagonists of President Trump.
“The president wants new ownership of CNN and changes to CNN programming,” a White House official told reporters. “He thinks the current leadership is openly hostile and believes a sale is long overdue.”
The Ellisons have also been deliberate in strengthening their relationship with President Trump during a period in which the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division — which ultimately reports to the president — will determine whether either mega-merger goes forward. The father-son duo appeared with Trump in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center Honors just two days before Paramount launched its counteroffer.
According to The Guardian, Larry Ellison personally phoned President Trump after the Netflix-Warner announcement, warning that the move “would hand Silicon Valley near-total control over streaming media” and suppress competition in a rapidly consolidating industry.
David Ellison has since elaborated publicly on his vision for a combined CNN–CBS News operation. In an interview with CNBC, he described Paramount’s goal to “build a scaled news service that is in the trust business, in the truth business, that speaks to the 70 percent of Americans in the middle.”
Under the Ellison plan, CNN and CBS News would fall under the direction of Bari Weiss, the former New York Times columnist now serving as CBS News editor-in-chief — a figure who has aggressively rebranded CBS as “anti-woke.” One of Weiss’s earliest headline-grabbing decisions was hiring Matt Gutman as CBS’s chief correspondent across its flagship programs.
Gutman, however, sparked outrage after describing text messages between the alleged killer and his romantic partner in the assassination of Charlie Kirk as “very touching” and “intimate” during a live segment. Within 24 hours, he issued a public apology acknowledging he “deeply regretted” the remarks, insisting he “unequivocally condemns” the killing and expressing sympathy for Kirk’s family and supporters.
Despite the backlash, White House aides say President Trump remains intrigued by Paramount’s proposal — particularly because it includes CNN, which the president believes is overdue for major reform. Under the Ellison plan, aides say, CNN would be restructured to reflect a “post-woke” CBS ethos that aims to restore credibility and dismantle the network’s entrenched ideological biases.
During a Monday roundtable at the White House, President Trump struck a measured but unmistakably strategic tone. “I know the companies very well. I know what they’re doing. But I have to see what percentage of market they have. None of them are particularly great friends of mine. I want to do what’s right.”
Still, the rival takeover bids have triggered unusually unified concern across the political spectrum. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) slammed both proposals as “anti-monopoly nightmares,” while Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) warned the mergers “would shrink consumer choice and silence independent voices.”
As The Wall Street Journal put it bluntly in a recent political newsletter:
“Both Netflix and Paramount are acting like the fate of any multibillion-dollar deal runs through the Oval Office—because it does.”