While most insiders still believe that AT&T's $89 billion acquisition of Time Warner will be approved with few conditions, the Trump White House still apparently believes it can use the threat of blocking the deal as "leverage" to force favorable coverage from Time Warner owned CNN. CNBC reported this week that insiders predict the deal to close in the next sixty days, regardless of worries from consumer advocates about the anti-competitive impact of the deal.
The
New York Times subsequently reported this week that "White House advisers have discussed" the merger as being used as a "potential point of leverage over their adversary," CNN.
The Daily Caller also reported this week that the administration may try to require CNN boss Jeff Zucker to be fired as a condition of the deal.
That said, this may all be sound and fury, signifying nothing. AT&T and Time Warner already managed to eliminate the need for FCC review by selling an Atlanta TV station and avoiding any spectrum license transfers, which would have triggered FCC involvement. That means the deal only needs approval by the DOJ, where Trump appointed a new antitrust boss that has publicly stated he doesn't see any problem with the megamerger.
Trump repeatedly promised to block the merger on the campaign trail.
"In an example of the power structure I’m fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN -- a deal we will not approve in my administration because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," Trump said last fall.
But most analysts doubt that the administration actually blocks the merger, even if Trump thinks CNN is mean. In part because it would run in stark contrast to the
ultra-cozy treatment large telecom companies like AT&T have received so far under the Trump administration, but also because AT&T's precisely the type of company to do whatever's necessary to get the deal approved. Even if that means trampling editorial independence at CNN in order to scale back critical coverage of the President.