Tag: Jared Kushner

Saudis and Kushner and Trump, oh my: Why it matters that CNN stay out of Paramount’s clutches

AI-generated image via Google Gemini.

CNN: Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it.

I like to say that friends don’t let friends watch cable news. I rarely watch any of the prime-time talk shows on cable — certainly not Fox, but not MS NOW or CNN, either. They all rely on the same formula, which I’d describe as keeping you enraged and upset so that you don’t touch that dial.

On the other hand, I will tune in to CNN when there’s significant breaking news. And I think it’s vitally important that we have news organizations that aren’t totally in thrall to the Trump regime, which is why I’m glad that CNN and MS NOW are there even if I don’t watch them very often.

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So I was relieved at the recent announcement that Warner Bros. Discovery would sell itself to Netflix, even though that left the fate of CNN uncertain. And I was horrified when the Trump-friendly Ellison family, the new owners of Paramount, decided to launch a hostile takeover attempt after losing the initial sweepstakes.

How bad is this? Let us count the ways.

► Paramount recently acquired CBS News, and its head, conservative opinion journalist Bari Weiss, is lined up to run CNN as well should the Ellison bid prevail. Not only does that raise ideological concerns, but it also would likely lead to major job cuts as the two operations are consolidated.

► After CBS News’ “60 Minutes” broadcast an interview  in which ex-MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized Trump, Paramount executives all but apologized to Trump, reports Charles Gasparino of the New York Post.

► Investors in the Paramount bid include the Saudi, Qatari and United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth funds. As Oliver Darcy of Status News observes, “Most startlingly, Saudi Arabia, which ordered the brutal killing of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi just a few short years ago, would effectively own a slice of one of the world’s leading newsrooms, if Ellison should get his way.

► Another investor in the Paramount quest is Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, by way of his private equity firm, Affinity Partners. Dan Primack writes at Axios, “Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case.”

► Trump himself has been lashing out at CNN this week, pushing for a sale and saying he might get involved in any antitrust proceedings over whether the sale of WBD to Netflix would be legal or not, reports NPR’s David Folkenflik.  It goes without saying that a sale to Paramount would be just as problematic, but we all know that Trump will use antitrust law to reward his friends and punish his enemies.

We should not be in the position of having to root for Netflix to win the WBD sweepstakes. Giant media monopolies are bad for the economy and bad for democracy. In this case, though, a sale to Netflix would at least give CNN a fighting chance of remaining an independent monitor of power — rather than yet another news outlet that’s sold its soul to the forces of authoritarianism.

Is Trump’s Gaza beach fantasy just a new way to distract the media? Maybe — but I wouldn’t be too sure.

Retro image of a couple on the beach
Photo via Wikimedia Commons

News organizations are loading up on stories about Donald Trump’s ridiculous and offensive proposal that the U.S. take over Gaza, relocate its Palestinian residents to Egypt and Jordan, and turn it into a beach resort. At the moment, for instance, The New York Times homepage leads with five stories about Trump and Gaza. The lead headline in The Boston Globe’s print edition is “Audacious Gaza idea has officials scrambling.” (Audacious?)

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But we’re also hearing warnings not to get too caught up in Trump’s latest outrage of the day. The real news, we’re told, is that Elon Musk and his merry band of 19-year-olds are illegally taking a wrecking ball to the government, blowing a hole through privacy protections and potentially interfering with federal payment systems.

For instance, Patrick Reiss, who produces a daily newsletter for Vox called The Logoff, writes:

Beware the shiny object: So often, Trump says something wild that takes everyone’s focus and stirs up outrage — and then it gets walked back. It takes all of our attention, but we end up right where we started…. Trump right now is attempting to massively expand his power over the US government, and he’s using that expanded power to make policy moves with ramifications at home and all over the world. That’s the Trump story to keep tracking.

If you’re not familiar with The Logoff, it’s a short daily newsletter that focuses on one Trump story in the news. It’s designed to help you avoid doomscrolling through an endless stream of updates about Trump’s latest shockers. I learned about it from Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab, and I recommend it. You can sign up here.

All that said, I’m not so sure that Trump isn’t serious about Gaza, and shame on the news media for paying so little attention when he brought it up last fall. What? You don’t remember? I do. To his credit, John T. Bennett wrote a long news analysis for Roll Call last October after Trump. Here’s how it began:

A Middle East Monaco? That was what former President Donald Trump recently floated for post-war Gaza — but there are reasons why the concept has yet to gain traction.

Prompted by a conservative radio host earlier this month, the Republican presidential nominee and real estate mogul suggested the obliterated strip one day could rival the ritzy city-state that has become a playground for the world’s rich and famous along the French Riviera.

Trump made those remarks in an interview with right-wing talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt, in which he lied (according to PolitiFact) about having visited Gaza at one time. He told Hewitt: “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world.”

Axios mentioned it but put the emphasis on Trump’s lie about having visited Gaza. The much-maligned Newsweek published a story about it. But there was very little mainstream pickup. After all, Roll Call isn’t exactly breakfast-table reading in most homes. The Times even reported on the Trump family’s plan to build a luxury hotel in Israel without making any reference to Trump’s Gaza musings.

Given that this has been rattling around Trump’s head for months, maybe we ought to take it as something more than a distraction from President Musk’s activities. And given that his son-in-law Jared Kushner had previously talked about moving the Palestinian residents out and building and that its waterfront property was “very valuable,” as Patrick Wintour of The Guardian reported in March 2024, maybe we ought to take it very seriously indeed.

Is it going to happen? To quote Patrick Reiss again, “almost certainly not.” As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman report in the Times (gift link), Trump simply blurted out his idea in a joint appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without any preparation. “There was little beyond an idea inside the president’s head,” they wrote.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to do it. The media simultaneously give Trump too much and too little credit at moments like this. Too much: Oh, he’s a mastermind, blurting out crap to distract us from what’s really important. Too little: He’s an idiot, he doesn’t really mean it, don’t worry about it.

I hope this crazy story will fade away in a day or two. But I wouldn’t be so sure.