Major corporate mergers and acquisitions now depend entirely on how close one’s relationship to the president of the United States is.
Nearly everyone in the world of media and entertainment was taken by surprise yesterday when Netflix announced they were withdrawing their proposed bid to acquire Warner Bros. film studio and its substantial catalogue of movies and intellectual properties. But last December, mere days after Netflix’s bid was announced to the world, I pointed out that it wasn’t a done deal at all:
Understand that this is all still quite contingent: Paramount Skydance (the product of another merger completed a few months ago) has appealed directly to Warner Bros. shareholders in a hostile bid to force them to overturn their board’s decision. The deal also still requires antitrust clearance from Trump’s Federal Trade Commission. Given that Trump has reportedly been pushing for ally David Ellison’s Paramount to win the bid, don’t be surprised if Netflix fails at the last hurdle. Trump is a rather . . . transactional type, and he’s already announced his intent to personally review the acquisition. Expect something delightfully sordid!
And here we are. I’ll admit, I missed big by predicting something “delightfully sordid.” Instead, we got something unpleasantly sordid: The final nail in the coffin for the Netflix bid was almost certainly board member Susan Rice’s ill-timed appearance on a podcast hosted by Preet Bharara on February 20, where she promised “accountability” for Trump administration wrongdoers once the Democrats took office. This was interpreted by MAGA’s most agitated online voices as a promise of lawfare against the administration — the irony of complaining about this is apparently completely lost upon them — and led to Laura Loomer loudly demanding the former national security adviser resign her position on the board of Netflix.
Since Loomer has Trump’s ear, that meant that Trump himself began to instantly parrot Loomer’s line, demanding Rice resign from Netflix or “pay the consequences.” That put Netflix in an impossible position — they were not going to earn the eternal wrath of progressives by caving to Trump and firing Rice, not for a bid they were going to have extreme difficulty getting Trump’s approval on anyway. So they have bowed to the inevitable and cut their losses.
The upshot is that Netflix’s competitor Paramount — owned by Trump ally David Ellison — now seems all but assured to win the battle to purchase Warner Bros. You will read plenty of shrieking about the dangers of “media consolidation” in the coming days from journalists who all secretly pray to one day work a salaried position at the New York Times; little of it will be worth listening to. On an aesthetic level, some will celebrate the fact that the soulless Netflix will now no longer yank Warner Bros. movies out of theaters — but the death of the theatrical experience can only be delayed, not denied.
It is on the level of political principle that I am disturbed. It is not just the seemingly open corruption of this entire process that leaves me shaken. I am shaken by how little people will care. Not just Trump’s diehard supporters, but the great mass of us — we are now so benumbed to the coarseness of the era that we simply shrug and accept the blunt reality that major corporate mergers and acquisitions depend entirely on how close (and remunerative) one’s relationship to the president of the United States is.