Trump Takes over American Media

What’s being sold here as a series of discrete corporate decisions is, in reality, a slow-motion liquidation of journalistic independence, with Donald Trump acting less like a president than a feudal lord dispensing favors. The merger fights surrounding CBS, CNN, and Warner Bros. Discovery are no longer about market efficiency or shareholder value; they are loyalty tests. Media conglomerates, suffocating under debt and desperate for scale, have discovered that the fastest route to regulatory approval is not innovation or public trust, but submission—preferably televised. Trump doesn’t need to nationalize the press when he can simply dangle merger approval like a scepter and let executives volunteer their own newsrooms for sacrifice. Continue reading “How Trump Is Trading Regulatory Power for Media Control”