CBS Hosting Dinner Praising Trump And His Love Of The First Amendment
from the lying-liars-and-the-lies-they-tell dept
Talk about pathetic.
CBS has announced that the now-Larry Ellison owned network will be hosting a lavish dinner this week praising Donald Trump and his (nonexistent) dedication to the First Amendment. The dinner will be hosted at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, which the State Department claimed in December 2025 was being renamed “The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.”
Truly banana republic type shit.
Oliver Darcy got a hold of the original invite for the dinner, and it’s everything you might expect:
Trump is, as regular Techdirt readers may recall, arguably the worst president in a century when it comes to trampling press freedom, free speech, and the First Amendment. When the administration isn’t trying to destroy comedians for telling jokes about the president, it’s busy crushing whatever was left of public media in the U.S., or threatening the broadcast licenses of networks that do basic journalism.
CBS management doesn’t care about any of that, of course, because it’s owned by billionaire right wing Trump ally, Larry Ellison. And Larry and David Ellison are desperate to have the government sign off on their job-destroying merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers. The Warner Brothers board is voting to approve the deal on the same day as the dinner.
Despite some pretense that the Trump DOJ is doing its due diligence to review the deal, there’s little real doubt that the feds will rubber stamp the transaction. The real question mark rests with a likely antitrust lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general to block the transaction.
It’s worth noting that Larry Ellison’s son David couldn’t attend a hearing last week on the massive problems with the Paramount Warner merger due to a purported death in the family (nobody seems able to determine who died), but he was able to make an appearance at Cinemacon a day earlier to make all sorts of empty promises about how wonderful the merger will be:
“David Ellison…made a unexpected appearance at CinemaCon, the annual gathering of theater owners. He took the stage to reassure exhibitors they have nothing to fear, whether it be the new regime at Paramount, or his pending acquisition of Warner Bros.”
They of course have everything to fear. The massive $108 billion in debt from the Warner Brothers deal will inevitably result in mass layoffs, price hikes, and sagging product quality due to the need to cut corners to service the debt. This is before we even talk about the layoffs already happening at CBS.
It’s simply not up for debate: this happens absolutely every single time folks like the Ellisons delude themselves into thinking mass consolidation does anything useful outside of generate tax breaks, drive short-lived stock boosts, and let guys like David Ellison pretend they’re “savvy dealmakers.”
Pre-merger promises about release windows (or anything else) are absolutely meaningless. But with just a handful of people at the top financially disincentivized from learning anything from history (including the three previous disastrous Warner Brothers mergers), the dysfunction just repeats itself indefinitely. We’ve seen merger dysfunction and chaos before, but this one has the potential to outdo them all.
Filed Under: consolidation, corruption, david ellison, dinner, donald trump, first amendment, free speech, journalism, larry ellision, media, mergers, regulators
Companies: cbs, paramount, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “CBS Hosting Dinner Praising Trump And His Love Of The First Amendment”
I shall host a press conference praising trump’s healthy eating habits
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lol, you lost the election. Relax. You only have to try again in 2 years.
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Not really the point, dipshit.
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What’s your opinion on Trump distracting from the Epstein files?
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That’s really your solution to defend the 1st Amendment, waiting for a president that cares about it?
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News executives sponsoring a dinner does not, in fact, violate the first amendment, dipshit.
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News execs who are currently censoring the news to benefit someone their owner has spent lavishly to get elected, owners who have recently had a megamerger approved in spite of it being against the public interest in every conceivable way, and had the government bought and paid for by said ownerships threaten investigations into anyone and everyone involved with a rival bidder. Just normal behaviour, I mean, which news agency hasn’t appointed a government approved censor with no qualification other than being right wing?
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Execs and gov hobnobbing is a most definitely nothing new.
The only reason you care at all is because THIS time, you lost and it’s the guys you don’t like doing it.
I have zero sympathy.
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That’d be why I’m always so vocal in the comments here about my dislike of techdirt’s posting op eds by K Street lobbyists, even when I agree with some of the points made. Corporate lobbying and bribery should be illegal, full stop, and a lobbyist throwing money at the ‘right side’ doesn’t make it excusable. Hope that helps, champ.
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Nobody said it did. Maybe leave the namecalling for when you’re not attacking straw men.
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It took you 34 minutes to repeat the name you were called.
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it’s funny how much the first amendment mattered to you until trump was in charge and then it became a dead letter so long as trump got what he wanted and the people you hate were hurt.
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Why do you always seem so angry that your “team” won in 2024?
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Maybe because winning by cheating (the only kind Republicans can achieve) doesn’t give the same fulfillment as legitimacy.
Wait, what?
The Ellisons don’t delude either themselves or anybody else. This is as silly as stating that Marlon Brando deluded himself into being the Godfather Don Corleone.
It is not delusion but professional pretense, just like the whole First Amendment theatre.
Even if Marlon Brando had by far being the more convincing actor, and the script had been way less stereotypic, implausible and boring than what the Ellisons put on here.
The dead relative
It is with great sadness that we have to announce the demise of the Ellison family conscience. To be fair, they have been out of public sight for decades and an elusive sight before, but it is only now that they have been officially declared dead rather than missing and we have the official signed death certificate.
Everyone able to cover the entry fee is cordially invited to the wake.
The merger is not through, but we already have the first consolidation victim
Satire is dead.
Like a gun club celebrating their love of conservation, or Donald Trump saying he loves women.
I wonder how far their head was up his ass while they were licking it
Public Event?
Everyone gets invited.
Why should I care that Fox news is hosting a dinner?