House Antitrust Democrats Hammer Trump Interference in Review of Proposed WBD Bids
House Antitrust Subcommittee members were sharply divided during a hearing Wednesday on concerns about the potential impact of dueling Netflix and Paramount Skydance proposals to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. The subpanel's Democrats opposed both proposals but appeared to have stronger misgivings about a Paramount Skydance purchase, given the company's recent interference with CBS’ news content. Republicans were far more muted about the WBD proposals and in some instances chided Democrats for using the hearing to criticize the Trump administration’s media regulatory actions, including FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s handling of Skydance’s $8 billion purchase of Paramount Global last year (see 2507240079).
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Lobbyists said they expect the debate about the WBD purchase proposals and the Trump administration’s media actions to also feature prominently during the House Communications Subcommittee's FCC oversight hearing, which the Commerce Committee set for Jan. 14, as expected (see 2601060062). Carr will testify, along with Commissioners Anna Gomez (D) and Olivia Trusty (R). The hearing will begin at 10:15 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn. Carr drew significant criticism from Democrats during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in December over his media regulatory actions since taking over as FCC chief in January 2025 (see 2512170070).
House Antitrust Chairman Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., briefly sparred during the hearing when the latter spoke longer than his allotted time to criticize President Donald Trump and the administration for corrupting federal antitrust review processes. Raskin warned that those actions presage a similar dynamic for whichever company buys WBD.
Trump has already said he will be closely involved in an antitrust review of the prevailing purchase, and he “seems to want Paramount and Netflix to compete for his approval of a deal,” Raskin said. “Both companies are already lobbying the White House, [and Trump] is not an antitrust expert, nor is he committed to antitrust law.” WBD shareholders rejected Paramount Skydance’s revised takeover bid Wednesday (see 2601070048).
Raskin called the Trump administration's and FCC's handling of Skydance/Paramount a clear case of “corruption,” in part because of Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement in Trump's lawsuit against CBS over the network's editing of a 60 Minutes interview in October 2024 with former Vice President Kamala Harris (see 2507020053). The settlement happened just weeks before the FCC approved Skydance/Paramount. Raskin also cited reports that Carr advised Paramount executives on handling Trump during a December 2024 event that he attended as the company’s guest, using a pair of tickets worth $12,000. Carr has repeatedly pushed back against Democrats’ claims of a corrupt Skydance/Paramount review process (see 2508270067).
'Beyond the Pale'
Fitzgerald chided Raskin for going over his allotted five minutes to make an opening statement, noting that those speeches “can be as long as necessary, if they stay on topic. This is clearly a bashing of [Trump] and beyond the pale of” House Judiciary. Raskin responded that he was “not going to accept any subject matter or content regulation” from Fitzgerald, contending that panel Democrats “never interrupted an opening statement of anybody on your side of the aisle. What a ridiculous thing to do.”
Raskin was one of several Democrats who noted concerns about how a Paramount Skydance purchase of WBD would affect CNN’s content. He criticized CBS for pulling a 60 Minutes segment on Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees who were deported to an El Salvadoran prison, saying it was an effort to curry favor with Trump (see 2512220028). “The White House must not be allowed to use the merger process as another tool to bend the media to its will,” said House Antitrust ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. “A proposed merger, be it with Netflix, Paramount or some other entity, must be analyzed on its own merits.”
“Americans don’t like these mergers,” said Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt. “They don’t want a few giant companies controlling what they see and what they hear.”
Fitzgerald emphasized that the House Antitrust hearing was “not about picking winners or losers in the merger context. This is for Warner Bros. shareholders” to decide. The subpanel intended to “start a much-needed conversation about whether further consolidation in the streaming industry would be helpful or harmful to consumers,” he said. But Fitzgerald later touted a December opinion piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal supporting Netflix’s WBD purchase bid. Some congressional Republicans have raised concerns about Netflix buying WBD, notably including Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Mike Lee of Utah (see 2512040056).
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, stressed that any federal antitrust review must focus on “the welfare of the consumer,” rather than prioritizing other factors like potential job cuts that would follow a merger. “If you go to any other standard, you start running into problems,” he said. “When you focus on the consumer, in the long run, it typically benefits the workers, the businesses, the market.” Jordan wants “to focus on workers and make sure they have jobs, too, but you can't do that because in the long run, it will end up skewing the market.”