U.S. President Donald Trump poses on the red carpet for the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 7, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
President Donald Trump expressed skepticism on Sunday night about Netflix‘s proposed acquisition of parts of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the massive deal “could be a problem” because of how much market share Netflix would end up with.
Trump also said that he will be involved in the process of approving the deal, which was announced on Friday.
The streaming giant Netflix needs regulatory sign-off for its planned purchase of WBD’s film studio and streaming properties, including HBO Max. The deal has an enterprise value of nearly $83 billion.
Paramount Skydance on Monday said it was launching a hostile bid to buy all of WBD after losing out to Netflix. Larry Ellison, the billionaire father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, is close to Trump.
David Ellison told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Monday morning, “We’ve had great conversations with the president about this, but I don’t want to speak for him.”
Trump, asked Monday afternoon about Paramount’s bid, said he knew nothing about it.
He also said he wants to see the competing companies’ market percentages — signaling that the size of the media giant that would result from the deal is a major factor for him.
“None of them are particularly great friends of mine,” Trump said.
Paramount revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its bid is being backed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is a former White House advisor.
Trump suggested he was unaware of Kushner’s involvement with Paramount.
The filing also said other outside financing partners included the investment funds of three Gulf states: Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, and the Gulf funds “have agreed to forgo any governance rights – including board representation – associated with their non-voting equity investments,” the filing said,
“Accordingly, the Transaction will not be within CFIUS’s jurisdiction,” the filing said, referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews such investments.
Asked Sunday if WBD’s deal with Netflix should be allowed, Trump said, “Well, that’s the question.”
“They have a very big market share,” the president said, referring to Netflix.
“And when they have Warner Brothers, you know, that share goes up a lot,” Trump told reporters on the red carpet before an event at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
“So I don’t know, that’s going to be for some economists to tell,” Trump said. “I’ll be involved in that decision, too.”
Trump said that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos made no guarantees about the merger when he visited the Oval Office last week.
“He’s a great person,” Trump said of Sarandos. “He’s done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things, and he’s got a lot of interesting things happening, aside from what you’re talking about.”
“But it is a big market share. There’s no question,” Trump said. “It could be a problem.”
A senior Trump administration official told CNBC on Friday that the administration views the deal with “heavy skepticism.”
The proposed acquisition has raised antitrust concerns from lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who said it “looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare.”
Paramount warned WBD’s lawyers in a recent letter that a sale to Netflix likely would “never close” because of regulatory challenges in the U.S. and abroad, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Comcast also had sought to buy WBD’s film and streaming assets.
In addition to the sale of those assets to Paramount, WBD plans to spin out Discovery Global, which would include the CNN, TNT Sports and Discovery channels.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.
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