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Trump Joins the Streaming Wars
01:28:30
The fate of Hollywood rests in President Trump's hands as Netflix and Paramount fight to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery—the home of HBO Max, Harry Potter, and Superman. Will Trump back Paramount's bid by longtime loyalist Larry Ellison (with help from presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner)? Or will Netflix's Ted Sarandos be able to woo the President to his side? Jon, Tommy, and Lovett discuss Trump's involvement in the Hollywood mega-deal and all the rest of the news, including the administration's bailout for soybean farmers who have been hurt by tariffs, Congressional Republicans unwillingness to do anything about the coming ACA premium hikes, and the President's promise to sign an executive order that would sweep away state AI regulations. Then, Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, who broke the Warner Brothers merger news, talks to Lovett about the future of Hollywood and the details of the rival bids for WBD.
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- [00:00]
Jon Favreau
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- [00:14]
Jon Lovett
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Jon Favreau
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- [00:42]
Jon Lovett
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- [01:27]
Jon Favreau
Ms. Now's Rachel Maddow tells the story of one of the most shocking decisions in American history in her new original podcast, Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. This six part series reveals how an executive order authorizing the roundup of innocent Americans came to be. And a bombshell discovery in the unlikeliest of places that would ultimately expose it all. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:09]
Jon Lovett
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- [02:11]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Levitt.
- [02:12]
Tommy Vietor
I'm Tommy Vitor.
- [02:13]
Jon Lovett
On today's show, we'll talk about how Republicans are about to let your health care premiums double or triple. And what Trump has decided to do about all the economic harm he's inflicted. We'll also get into the politics of the next big media merger between Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery, where Trump has, of course, inserted himself. Then we'll hear Lovett's interview with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, who reported out the story of Netflix buying Warners and why it matters. But let's start with this week's big push from the White House on the issue Trump calls a con job and a hoax. Affordability. Even though the administration has been trying their best to keep potentially bad economic news to themselves, they just announced the report on a key measure of inflation will be delayed until next month. The data we do have hasn't been great. Consumer sentiment is down 28% from last December. Big retailers keep warning that they're about to increase prices because they can't continue to absorb the costs of Trump's tariffs. Private companies cut 32,000 jobs last month, led by small businesses, which can't absorb the cost of tariffs as well as big companies. Total layoffs this year topped 1.1 million, the highest since 2020 in the pandemic. And another pandemic era phrase has returned this holiday season. K shaped economy where the richest people are doing great, but those with lower incomes are not. Trump's preferred strategy to deal with this, of course, is to just keep denying reality. But it seems like some combination of his advisors and nervous Republicans in Congress have convinced him to at least try pretending he cares. He issued an executive order last week to develop a task force to investigate potential price fixing in imported food. The report is due in just six months.
- [03:57]
And on Monday, he announced a $12 billion bailout paid for by all of us, for farmers who are struggling because of Trump's tariffs, which are also being paid for by all of us. Here's Trump at that event.
- [04:10]
Jon Favreau
You know, Biden made none. He didn't make any trade deals having to do with the farmers or any of it. It's crazy. China committed. He was the worst president in the history of our country. By the way, in case anybody has any questions, we inherited a mess. Democrats caused the affordability problem. They have a tendency to just say, this election's based on affordability and nobody questions him. John, you know, nobody says, oh, well, what do you mean by that? But they just say the word. They never say anything else because they caused the problem, but we're fixing the problem.
- [04:42]
Jon Lovett
I wonder why nobody says, what do you mean? By that, is it because they're not fucking idiots? It's also true. What does the word affordability mean?
- [04:51]
Jon Favreau
It's funny too, that there's two things going on at once, which is that costs have never been lower and the economy's completely fucked up because of the Democrats. Like you just sort of. Those are the two things happening at the same time.
- [05:01]
Jon Lovett
Trump's also heading to Pennsylvania on Tuesday for the first big economic speech of his nationwide affordability blitz, which I can only assume he'll, he'll treat with the kind of message discipline he's known for. You think we'll see a lot of these events? You think he'll stick to the script?
- [05:17]
Tommy Vietor
I'm excited to watch.
- [05:19]
Jon Favreau
It's funny that we're back. It's such a normal thing. It's like.
- [05:23]
We gotta do a fucking tour. You gotta go out. We're gonna do an affordability tour. We're gonna put the word affordability behind you. It's like the most old school, normal political reaction from a White House.
- [05:32]
Jon Lovett
No way. The word affordability is behind him, Right? Because he's called it a conjob.
- [05:36]
Tommy Vietor
He's gonna call it like, it's gonna be like best economy ever. It's gonna be like aspirational marketing, like.
- [05:41]
Jon Lovett
Working class tax cuts.
- [05:42]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, exactly.
- [05:42]
Jon Lovett
That's the new name for the stupid bill. So do we think that farmers will be appropriately grateful to the President for easing the pain he continues to inflict on them?
- [05:52]
Tommy Vietor
Potentially? I mean, this is just the completely predictable outcome of this trade war. It happened in the first term, Remember, he slapped a bunch of tariffs on China, then he had to give us farmers a bailout. And it's happening again. But this time it's worse because the Chinese were better prepared. They'd already bu relationships with farmers in Argentina and Brazil. They bought soybeans from them. They didn't buy them from the US farmers, which devastated American soybean farmers. I talked about this with Rob sand, who's running for governor of Iowa in the episode for Thanksgiving. And Trump is claiming that the Chinese are going to buy 12 billion worth of American soybeans, but it hasn't happened yet. Either way, it is completely screwed up. The ability of these farmers to like, plan, manage crops, do all the things they need to do. So I just want to tell you some stats though, guys. Meanwhile, over in China, in the first 11 months of this year, China's exports increased by 5.4%. That's $3.4 trillion in exports. And they have a trade surplus of over $1 trillion, even with an average US tariff of 37%. So exports to the US are down close to 29% from the year before. So the Chinese sold more to Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America. What a surprise. So maybe this cycle of, like, bankrupting American farmers and then paying them off will work again. My guess is ultimately these farmers would rather just, like, run a business and not deal with this shit.
- [07:06]
Jon Lovett
But making China great again?
- [07:07]
Tommy Vietor
We'll see. Yeah. Trillion dollars trade surplus.
- [07:10]
Jon Favreau
The bailout also is a fraction of what his policies have cost farmers. One estimate put it out on $44 billion for this year. And I want to imagine what it would be like if there was a Democratic policy to tax an industry into oblivion and then send a check for roughly a third or a quarter of that amount to the people impacted. And what Republicans would do with that mix of protectionism and.
- [07:39]
Winner choosing. Yeah. And idiocy.
- [07:42]
Jon Lovett
Trump said it himself. He said at that event, he goes, this money would not be possible without tariffs. Because of tariffs, this is possible. Yes, we know.
- [07:50]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [07:50]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. That's the whole problem.
- [07:52]
Jon Favreau
And part of, I would say, like, to me, my bigger question in all of this is why isn't there more political fallout among farmers in this moment and more of an effort to figure out how to build support for Democratic candidates or Democratic policies in these states? Because this is ridiculous. I mean, these are people that are being decimated. The amount Trump is going to send as a bailout is no match for the cost that he's incurring on their economies. And we will also, someone like Rob sand, who's a great candidate, will struggle as hard as possible to overcome the disadvantage of being a Democrat running in a state as red as Iowa.
- [08:34]
Jon Lovett
I will say I did an event last month with one House candidate from Iowa and from Wisconsin, and they were saying it's all they hear everywhere from farmers and people in rural America.
- [08:46]
Tommy Vietor
It's a lot of consolidation in these big agribusinesses that ultimately probably like tax cuts and deregulation in other places. But, yeah, it's terrible.
- [08:53]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Better way to maybe say it is like, how can we turn this into an opportunity?
- [08:56]
Jon Lovett
The other challenge with doing it this way, aside from me just being stupid to slap tariffs on people that hurt them and then use taxpayer dollars to help defray some of the pain.
- [09:09]
Jon Favreau
It's punching someone in the face and.
- [09:10]
Jon Lovett
Then giving them an Advil, is the way that the program is going through, this bridge program at usda, the Agriculture Department. And when they did this in the first term, Because I think he gave $20 billion back in the first term. Independent analysis from the New York Times found that the payments that they made disproportionately went to the largest and wealthiest farms.
- [09:30]
Tommy Vietor
Absolutely.
- [09:31]
Jon Lovett
So it's not really. There's no good way to target the bailout to the people that are being hurt worst by the tariffs. Right. Which is a real fucking problem.
- [09:40]
Tommy Vietor
Love our farmers, though.
- [09:41]
Jon Lovett
One of those larger and wealthier farms might belong to soybean farmer Scott Besant, who's somehow still out there saying this. This is from the Sunday shows.
- [09:52]
Tommy Vietor
I'm involved in the agriculture industry. I run a soybean farm.
- [09:56]
Jon Favreau
And I can tell you, you invest in it.
- [09:58]
Lucas Shaw
Sorry, you own or invest in it.
- [10:00]
Jon Favreau
And people in my family go out.
- [10:01]
Tommy Vietor
And work on it.
- [10:02]
Jon Lovett
I actually just divested it this week.
- [10:04]
Tommy Vietor
As part of my ethics agreement.
- [10:06]
Jon Lovett
So I'm out of that business. People in his family, you think we're going third, fourth cousins? What do you think?
- [10:11]
Tommy Vietor
He Botox his personality? Like that dude that makes cadavers look loose.
- [10:16]
Jon Favreau
He's really gotten worse. He's gotten worse.
- [10:20]
Tommy Vietor
Of my best friends.
- [10:22]
Jon Lovett
By, like, 2027, he'll just be like.
- [10:26]
I do. I do.
- [10:27]
Tommy Vietor
I am grateful that he decided to deal with a massive conflict of interest in December of 2025.
- [10:32]
Jon Lovett
Glad we got there after months of.
- [10:34]
Tommy Vietor
Negotiating deals, agriculture deals.
- [10:36]
Jon Lovett
Unbelievable. And, of course, you know, there was the bailout. He's also. Trump has sort of finally, I guess this was like, a couple weeks ago, maybe last month, lifted the tariffs on all the food that we don't actually grow here. You know, he finally realized that we don't make bananas in the United States in coffee. So a little late on that.
- [10:57]
Jon Favreau
Not with that attitude.
- [11:00]
Jon Lovett
The other challenge is, and I mentioned this at the outset, that, like, you know, a lot of the pain from the tariffs still hasn't hit because these big companies have been absorbing the costs, like these retailers, and they're all saying, or a lot of them are saying, that like, come January, February, they're gonna finally increase prices. So just as Trump and the administration are starting to hope that, you know, inflation hits the Fed's target and things start to settle down and people start to feel the effect of the tax cuts come April, when they get their return. Like, retailers are gonna, you know, the tariffs that still exist, retailers are gonna start raising the prices.
- [11:37]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, it's also. Look, there's so many ways in which this is unfair. You know, we say tariffs as a shorthand, but, like, why are farmers struggling? Like, it's the Higher cost for inputs that they need. It's the trade war itself, making it so they can't sell what they're growing around the world. How do you measure that? How do you measure the cost of someone not being able to sell some of their income going down? That's not the. They're not paying a tariff on something they can't sell. So it all ends up being. Being a bailout that, yes, goes to.
- [12:11]
The wealthiest companies, but more broadly, there are plenty of people that are deserving of relief in the same way these farmers are deserving of relief that will receive nothing. There are people whose businesses have been decimated by Trump's haphazard and chaotic tariff policies, and they're not getting a dime from him.
- [12:28]
Jon Lovett
You heartened by the bold executive order on price fixing, Tommy?
- [12:35]
Like, it's not a bad idea.
- [12:37]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, it's a bad. Well, do something about it. Like, I don't think we need a blue ribbon commission. Like, the. The ag industry is unbelievably consolidated. There's, like, four companies. They control 85% of the beef market, 70% of pork, half the poultry industry. But I have zero confidence that Donald Trump will go after any of these companies because they are big fans of Republicans and are probably pouring money into his ballroom and his coffers. And, you know, it's just like, great. Announce a blue ribbon commission that'll give us a report in six months, and then we'll do what?
- [13:04]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, it reminds me of whenever gas prices would go through the roof, Chuck Schumer would do, like, a Sunday press conference in front of a gas station, being like, we gotta stop this gouging.
- [13:12]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah, I got a bill. As long as I've been alive and in politics, I've never noticed any kind of gouging actually be taken care of by a political policy.
- [13:23]
Tommy Vietor
No, I'm also. I'm excited in this speech to see the delta between the prepared remarks and what he actually says, you know, because, you know, he's got smart people in there, know that they need to, like, he needs to be like, I feel your. I feel your pain. I'm listening. I'm going to do something about it. We owe you more. But his instinct is going to be, stop your bitching. I gave you the best economy in the world. This is a hoax. Prices are down. Remember eggs? All you guys were talking about is eggs. You know, how about your eggs now? And, like, I think we're just going to hear all these demands for credit and repetition and accomplishment. It's Going to sound like Joe Biden yelling about Aus, you know?
- [13:56]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah, maybe he'll be yelling about Aus. Maybe Trump will. Whatever he says. It seems like we're going to be hear a whole year.
- [14:04]
Tommy Vietor
Good luck.
- [14:04]
Jon Lovett
Susie Wiles was on some MAGA podcast today that I couldn't quite recognize and she said that they're going to flip the script in this midterm and they're putting. She's putting Trump on the ballot. She's usually the president. They don't want to put the President on the ballot, but she's putting Trump on the ballot and that he's going to. She wants them to campaign in 2026, quote, like it's 2024 again.
- [14:25]
Jon Favreau
Okay, cool.
- [14:26]
Tommy Vietor
Oh, she was on Pod Force One. The. The one that. It's like the New York Post.
- [14:31]
Jon Lovett
Well. Oh, there was something there. MAGA moms too. She good for. Oh, no, I'm sorry.
- [14:36]
Tommy Vietor
This was July 10th.
- [14:37]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah, it was something. But not. But not Katie Miller. Not Katie Miller. The headsets were on that. And she got the big.
- [14:43]
Jon Favreau
A.
- [14:43]
Tommy Vietor
Big Elon interview.
- [14:44]
Jon Lovett
She got the big Elon interview. Oh, she did.
- [14:46]
Tommy Vietor
Well, I saw it previewed, but I didn't actually watch it because she is.
- [14:48]
Jon Lovett
Anyway, we're doing promo for her. We're the only ones. One thing Trump and Republicans in Congress likely won't be doing anything about, the massive premium hikes that are set to hit in a few weeks for more than 20 million Americans who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. John Thune is keeping the promise he made as part of the deal to end the government shutdown and will give Democrats a vote this Thursday on a three year extension of the ACA subsidies.
- [15:14]
Jon Favreau
We did it.
- [15:15]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, we did it. We did it. Got that vote. Republicans will be voting no, however. Yeah.
- [15:19]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [15:20]
Jon Lovett
But they also, they can't seem to agree on any kind of alternative. Some have proposed a two year extension with new income limits. This is a proposal by Bernie Moreno and Susan Collins. Others, I believe, Bill Cassidy and someone else whose name I can't remember right now have proposed. Mepo. He's still around.
- [15:42]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. There's crepo in the other one, right? Crepo. And another C word from that.
- [15:48]
Jon Lovett
Not Craig with the. Remember Larry Craig?
- [15:50]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. No, not him.
- [15:51]
Jon Lovett
It was Crapo with the foot tapping.
- [15:53]
Tommy Vietor
Wide stance.
- [15:54]
Jon Favreau
Just wide stance, man. Remember, that was. There was always rumors about that guy and then. And there were stories about him doing that and then all of a sudden it was reported.
- [16:02]
Lucas Shaw
That was wild.
- [16:03]
Tommy Vietor
You have to poop one standing there.
- [16:04]
Jon Favreau
With his poor beleaguered wife at that press conference. That poor wife standing by the side of the press conference. None of this is true. If you go, it's a conspiracy to stop me. America's greatest legislator, Larry Craig of Idaho.
- [16:18]
Jon Lovett
If you're too young or offline to know what we're talking about, just ask ChatGPT. They'll let you know about Larry Craig. Maybe they'll also tell you about the proposal by Crapo and Crapo.
- [16:30]
Lucas Shaw
Crepo.
- [16:30]
Jon Favreau
It was.
- [16:31]
Jon Lovett
Did I just say crapo?
- [16:32]
Jon Favreau
It's crapo. It's always, you want to say crapo. You want it to be crap.
- [16:35]
Jon Lovett
If he ended up being like a real figure that pissed people off, he'd be crap.
- [16:40]
Jon Favreau
Trump would call him crap, but no one even cares.
- [16:42]
Tommy Vietor
I thought you were doing a blue sky joke.
- [16:45]
Jon Lovett
Anyway, their proposal is no extension and all they're going to do is give people below 700% of the poverty line a thousand bucks in a tax free savings account.
- [16:56]
Tommy Vietor
So crazy.
- [16:57]
Jon Lovett
But all of this is sort of moots. And Senate Republicans reportedly won't be, as of this recording at least, coalescing behind a single alternative. Doesn't seem like House Republicans are doing much of anything. I think the House Republican Problem Solver Caucus is probably working with Democrats on something that won't go anywhere but just it doesn't seem like anything's happening. And this is also probably the last week to do anything before January 1st hits since everyone's, you know, leaving for the holidays and, and that's that. So on the Moreno Collins two year extension with limits, which that is similar to what the White House remember they were about to announce that a couple weeks ago and then they backed off because Republicans got nervous. Why do you guys think that Trump and Republicans couldn't get their shit together on a single alternative? So that at the very least, when Susie Wiles is making Donald Trump campaign like it's 2024, he and other Republican candidates have, have something to tell people that they tried on health care.
- [17:55]
Jon Favreau
So here's what's confusing to me about this. So John Kennedy from Louisiana, who always is good for a great quote, said this politico, have you ever heard of a Rorschach test? Let's smear it all over the wall. That's where the negotiations are at internally among the Republicans. So what's going on in the House makes sense. Which is there's a small number which is nothing.
- [18:17]
Jon Lovett
Right?
- [18:18]
Jon Favreau
Because there's a number of Republicans, I think, that would vote for some sort of compromise extension to try to SA their seats. But the vast majority of House Republicans don't want to do that, which means we're in a situation that doesn't look that different from previous votes like this. There's a majority that would pass an extension, but if Johnson allows that vote to take place, he will lose the speakership. He can only lose two or three at this point. So that makes sense. In the Senate, I actually don't understand what's happening because there is this compromise proposal that, given it already has two Republicans on board, would have a majority in the Senate. And I don't see why a bunch of them don't just get on board and send it over to DAI in the House because they're going. But. So I do think it's a genuine, like, ideological objection to the extensions, and it's because they fucked up. Because if they had put in place limits on the extensions and allowed those extensions to go forward, they would have made Obamacare more conservative. They would have been able to put in place a bunch of reforms. What they've done is allow it to lapse. And so anything they do is reviving the subsidies that currently will not exist on January 1st. And a lot of them just don't want to do that. And so, you know, Rick Scott is also somebody that's been in favor of just doing these. This sort of money in people's pockets for health care, which doesn't do anything to resolve the problem, which is if you don't have a health insurance and you have a medical event, you will go bankrupt. That's why people need insurance. So I don't understand what's happening in the Senate because they would obviously be benef. They would, they would be served politically by just sending something to the House.
- [19:51]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I mean, the health savings account plans would not only not solve the problem for most people, it would make the problem much, much worse because healthy young people would just not get health insurance. They would spend down the HSAs whenever they needed health care, and then premiums would go up for everyone else, and the, the, the ACA would go into a death spiral. I asked a Republican who worked on the Hill and health care a bunch and said, like, why isn't there an alternative? And this person said, either they don't care about health care and give no thoughts to policy, or they live in 2014 when just being against the ACA is all they know to say on the issue. And that sounded about right to me because there's like a couple dozen Republicans in swing districts. They are completely Freaked out. They know they're going to lose. Tony Fabrizio said they'd be down 15 points if they fail to extend these tax credits and they're likely to lose their seats. But the rest of them are in crazy gerrymandered seats or safe states and they just don't want to vote for Obama anything for ideological reasons or for, you know, policy reasons. And Trump was asked about it today and he tried to do like a Luigi Mangione impression. He was like, Democrats are in the pocket of the health insurance industry. It's like, what are you talking about, dude? And then he seemed to endorse an HSA plan, but he still doesn't have his own.
- [20:58]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, they're trying to say that because technically the expanded subsidies go to the insurance companies, that somehow it's making the insurance companies richer, which is them not realizing that people can easily just look up the fact that the money is paid to the insurance companies and then they are required by law to pass the savings on to the consumer. That's the whole point of the subsidies.
- [21:23]
Jon Favreau
Also change them. If you, if you have a problem with how lucrative they are for the insurance companies, you have the ability to legislate anything. You want to extend the subsidies to address your concerns.
- [21:31]
Jon Lovett
But it's really, it's just a pass through through the insurance companies. It's not a.
- [21:35]
Jon Favreau
Well, they have a problem. Right. They claim to have a problem with the fact there's a lot of people that sign up for Obamacare and never use it over the of the year. There's a lot of like, they have genuine ideological and policy questions. There are people that actually think about health care on the Republican side. They're just not willing to actually put anything forward because they just have never in 20 years of talking about health care aligned on any kind of a vision.
- [21:57]
Jon Lovett
I imagine that the Collins Moreno proposal is one for. I mean, Collins is the only one in a truly vulnerable seat right now who's a Senate Republican. I mean, you could also say that.
- [22:11]
Tommy Vietor
Moreno's like close enough.
- [22:12]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, like the guy that's running against Sherrod, whatever his face is Hursted something. He's John Hursted. Who knows? He'll probably say he's for that Husted better than grandpa.
- [22:25]
Jon Favreau
Hey, pretty good.
- [22:27]
Jon Lovett
So, you know, you can imagine the people in vulnerable seats. They're in the House too, saying they were for two year extension and the Democrats just wanted to give the subsidies to rich people. You know, they could run a campaign like that. But I do think Republicans control the White House and Congress. And most voters would say, well, gee, since you controlled everything, why didn't you make your little plan happen if you controlled everything? Senator Josh Hawley, he said to Burgess, Everett reporter at Semaphore today, Republicans had better offer something. I mean, what signal will it send if Republicans say we're going to say no to the Democrats plan, but we're not going to offer anything, the message that will send is good luck to the American people. We don't really care. And Holly said he wouldn't even rule out voting for the three year extension on Thursday.
- [23:11]
Jon Favreau
I had a question about this. I wonder if you thought about this, which is I'm glad we got a discharge petition through on the Epstein files, which is obviously making a difference for everybody this Christmas. But presumably there are a majority of House members that would sign on to an extension, maybe an extension with, with some kind of cap, some version of the, of the Senate proposal, like make them decide not to support that because you'd instantly get every Democrat to sign some kind of a compromise.
- [23:37]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah, they tried apparently. And like, you know, even the Don Bacons of the House were like, we're not signing a discharge petition on the three year extension. We will come up with our own bipartisan compromise.
- [23:50]
Jon Favreau
Right. But do, do, do one of these compromises, like let's get.
- [23:52]
Jon Lovett
I think it's out there. It's happening because they're trying to work.
- [23:54]
Tommy Vietor
In some politically damaging things like, you know, it has to cut funding for states that provide health care to un undocumented people or like further reductions in payments for abortion services. Like they just want to make it politically painful.
- [24:06]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. Hyde amendment stuff they wanted to include in that.
- [24:09]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, but like, man.
- [24:10]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, but I agree with you. I mean it's the obvious smart thing for them to do is pass it.
- [24:15]
Jon Lovett
It's. I mean I think that they are. This is one of the stupider fucking moves from the public. I mean aside from being awful on policy and hating that, like it's just politically a real head scratcher because I think they feel maybe they've avoided the pain so far, but the pain hasn't really hit yet. And when they're campaigning and healthcare premiums are up and the tariffs are still there and big companies are raising costs again, like, I don't think it's getting better for them.
- [24:41]
Jon Favreau
No, no.
- [24:41]
Tommy Vietor
And this is their voters too.
- [24:42]
Jon Lovett
Yeah.
- [24:52]
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- [26:43]
Jon Lovett
Monday also brought more exciting news in the war over which megacorporation will achieve total control of the entertainment industry. Hell yeah. You probably saw that Netflix has, at least for now, won the bidding war for Warner Brothers Discovery, agreeing to pay $72 billion in a deal that would give them the Warner Brothers half of the company, which includes the TV and movie studios as well as HBO Max. The Discovery half, which includes CNN and other cable networks, would split off on its own, though they could always go after that half later. But none of this is final. On Monday, David Ellison's Paramount Skydance, which recently absorbed what's left of CBS and CBS News, was reportedly preparing to launch a hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery. Ellison, whose father Larry is the billionaire founder of Oracle and friends with Trump Called the Netflix offer, quote, inferior, and told CNBC on Monday, quote, we're really here to finish what we started. Love it. People are gonna hear your interview with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw on this in a bit, but any headlines from that that we should know about?
- [27:42]
Jon Favreau
Hollywood is pretty freaked out. The Ellisons are pissed, but could put together more money. And Trump has a lot of power.
- [27:49]
Jon Lovett
And Paramount is bringing some pals along.
- [27:53]
If they go forward with the latest bid. They're making the offer along with sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar. And of course, no gang of Gulf autocrats trying to curry favor with Trump would be complete without the involvement of the man who was the president's second choice to marry Ivanka after Tom Brady, Jared Kushner.
- [28:12]
Tommy Vietor
He's like a chaperone.
- [28:13]
Jon Lovett
Jared's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, going in on the bid could help grease the wheels with regulators, especially because the Trump administration has already indicated it views the Netflix offer with, quote, heavy skepticism. But because Trump is also a messy bitch who loves drama, he posted a statement on Monday that was quite critical of Paramount for allowing CBS News 60 Minutes to air an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene in which she dared to criticize Trump, quote from the truth. My real problem was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air all caps. They are no better than the old ownership who just paid me millions of dollars for fake reporting about your favorite president, me. Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten worse. Tough review for Barry Weiss.
- [28:59]
Tommy Vietor
Wonder if there's a lesson there for everybody else.
- [29:01]
Jon Lovett
And here's Trump fielding a question on the deal during his White House event on Monday.
- [29:07]
Lucas Shaw
You spoke about Netflix last night, saying you have concerns about.
- [29:11]
Jon Favreau
I know. I know the companies very well. I know what they're doing, but I'd have to see. I. I have to see what percentage of market they have. I mean, none of them are particularly great friends of mine.
- [29:19]
Lucas Shaw
Paramount is supported by Jared Kushner.
- [29:21]
Jon Lovett
Mr. President, would that impact your decision if Paramount is.
- [29:25]
Jon Favreau
I don't know. I haven't. I've never spoken to him. He's really trying to work on Gaza, I think. Gaza. His primary thing is Gaza.
- [29:33]
Jon Lovett
Tommy, do you think this deal is. This hostile takeover bid could work now that the man who negotiated the Abraham Accords is on the case?
- [29:42]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, first of all, way to bribe him there, cbs. You guys nailed that. Also, the lighting there was so bad. Very, very amber golden dome.
- [29:49]
Jon Lovett
I mean, Jared.
- [29:50]
Tommy Vietor
Jared's participation is pure, uncut corruption. Like the Paramount is just like, okay, let's, let's bring this idiot. Maybe he can grease it from the inside. Maybe he can make this deal happen. And remember that the money Jared is investing is almost entirely from investment funds controlled by the Saudis, the Emirates and Qatar. I think it's 99% of the, like, 5 billion in assets yet. So he is a middleman with zero experience in, like, streaming or studios. It's just political ties and corruption and, you know, you have to ask, like, okay, at the same time. So the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari sovereign wealth funds have put up 24 billion to help finance this deal. So those sovereign wealth funds paid Jared, so they're paying him a fee to be part of an investment that they're also a part of on their own. Very interesting.
- [30:37]
Jon Lovett
Nice work if you get it.
- [30:38]
Tommy Vietor
Great business. Also, the sovereign wealth funds have agreed to have no say in the governance of the future companies. So no board seats, no voting rights, presumably to get around the national security process that could block the deal, the CFIUS process. So you have to wonder, like, why are these guys excited to be part of a deal that this merger where they're wildly overpaying for assets to create a company they can't control. And like, I think it's about control.
- [31:03]
Jon Lovett
Right.
- [31:03]
Tommy Vietor
It's like changing the cultural conversation. I think they just love journalism.
- [31:07]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Tommy Vietor
They love cinema. It's about, you know, you know, like washing their reputation. I mean, the whole thing is just pretty gross.
- [31:14]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. So we don't even. I talked to Lucas about this a little bit and actually it's. We don't totally understand their motivation. Right. Because they do claim to be giving up control. They do like the idea of diversifying into these other areas at the same time. Like, because it's such a big. Netflix. There's so many pieces to this. CNN is at stake in this as well. Netflix has said they don't want the cable business so that Discovery Global would spin off. Elson has said he would want it, he would keep it all and would make CNN and CBS a kind of Bari Weiss Gundam that she would control probably. Now, I asked actually Lucas about this, about would Ellison acquire CNN anyway if Netflix spun it off? And he actually thought he might, but didn't actually think that anybody. That the cable business is something you get if you do this deal, but nobody would want it independently, which may be a possibility.
- [32:12]
Jon Lovett
It does seem like, first of all, we should talk about the power Trump has to stop this deal because it's not as clear cut as I thought. At least When I first started reading about it, because, first of all, the FCC has no role here because there's not local television stations at stake.
- [32:28]
Tommy Vietor
Doj.
- [32:29]
Jon Lovett
And so it's doj. DOJ could ask a judge for an injunction, so they could maybe delay it for a couple months, but then the judge would have to grant the injunction, so they can try to block it. But it's not completely in the hands of Trump's doj. I do think he is playing coy. And, like, maybe it's too much market share for Netflix. But also, Ted Sarandos is fantastic. And also, I might be pissed at Paramount because 60 Minutes and Barry Weiss aren't leverage. Yeah, it's leverage. And if this takes, what, 18 months to close, you know, that's like a good part of the rest of Trump's term. And he can have all these companies, all three of these companies just kissing his ass and giving him all the content, all the Rush Hour movies he wants. He's already Got Rush Hour 4 coming.
- [33:13]
Jon Favreau
Out now he's got another cameo in a Batman movie. He's coming his way. But no, no, he's home alone. Yeah, sorry. Right. Yeah. So he doesn't have the ability to. He doesn't have the singular ability to stop it, but he does have the ability to approve it. I do think also, all this, him sort of going after Paramount today is a way of saying, for the next 18 months, everybody better be so nice to me. It's my birthday. It's my birthday until one of these deals is approved. Yeah.
- [33:43]
I talked about this with Lucas as well. I've seen a bunch of people come out against these deals, and I understand why, and people have genuine concerns about what this consolidation would mean. But I also do wonder what happens if people come up with what they'd want. Trump. You know, Trump claims he wants to save Hollywood, right? He comes, I'm gonna be the guy that saves Hollywood. Well, if Trump wants to be the savior of Hollywood, there's billions and billions of dollars Netflix has put on the table. If this deal gets stopped. Right, that's leverage. Trump has to make all kinds of demands, even though in any other administration, it wouldn't happen that way.
- [34:17]
Jon Lovett
Are you guys rooting for Netflix? Because Sarandos isn't as tight with Trump as the Ellisons, or is it still just. I mean, Netflix controlling Warner Brothers. That is a. That is a big market share right there.
- [34:29]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I think it's complicated.
- [34:30]
Jon Lovett
I think.
- [34:30]
Tommy Vietor
I think the best outcome is no merger at all, but there are political equities and there's like business and Hollywood equities. I think for a political perspective, I'm not excited about Paramount because you don't want like a Trump aligned billionaire and his annoying kid having an even larger amount of market share and power in Hollywood. The antitrust advocates might say though, that, that a supersized Paramount could create a streaming competitor, Netflix. That might be a good thing for consumers or for Hollywood if, you know, trying to get more buyers out there in the market who make TV and film. The pushback to that, though, is like, I don't know, even if a deal goes through, like, no matter what, there's one less buyer and that's not a good thing for people selling stuff. And then if Netflix wins, like, there are a lot of potential downsides. It gives them a huge chunk of the streaming business. Paramount says it's 40%. I don't know how to vet that. But like, they're the number one and number three biggest streamers. It means one less buyer in the market making stuff. It could kill the movie theater theater business because Netflix wants to get movies onto its streaming platform faster and that could drastically shorten theatrical release times. And then there's just a question of like, okay, so how is Netflix going to pay for this? Like, what costs are they going to cut? Are they going to fire people? Are they going to shut down lots? Are they going to raise prices? There was one analyst who said, where's my numbers? There's one analyst estimated that the deal needs to increase Netflix's cash flow by 8 billion per year for the next 20 years to justify itself. That's a lot of money. And then there's like a third theory out there that's just like, actually, Netflix doesn't really care if they close the deal. They just want to freeze Warner brothers discovery for 18 to 24 months while the process goes on and keep them from getting sold elsewhere and then just like press their advantage in streaming. Who knows if that's true, but it's an interesting theory.
- [36:05]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. The other side of it, though, is.
- [36:08]
According to the proposals, there's even more cuts if Warner Brothers and Paramount merge because those companies have more overlap.
- [36:15]
Tommy Vietor
Totally.
- [36:16]
Jon Favreau
There's this idea that Netflix is the death of movie theaters. Maybe it is. But when Fox and Disney, when Disney acquired 20th, there were 44% fewer releases because there's just one less studio. And those are both companies that believe in the movie business. And I do worry about what happens if CNN comes under the control of a Trump loyal family. It's one less Studio, one less independent media company. So I don't think there's really any great outcomes in either acquisition. I guess the hope would be that this gets dragged out, the Netflix deal gets killed, and somehow in the interim, the Paramount deal falls apart too. But if right now people are being a little too cavalier about saying the Netflix deal should be stopped without accepting that the downwind consequence of that is the Paramount one happens and there's a ton of bad outcomes for that deal.
- [37:09]
Jon Lovett
I will say one of the arguments Netflix is making is that their real competition is not with just other streamers, but TikTok, YouTube. And it is a bleak argument that may or may not be true, but like the idea that they see themselves at least as competing for eyeballs with all the wonderful stuff that we see on TikTok.
- [37:35]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, they're absolutely right and they are.
- [37:37]
Jon Lovett
And it's just like that is if it tells you something about the future of where they want to go.
- [37:42]
Tommy Vietor
I think. I do think that all entertainment is losing, like, time and mind share to TikTok, you know, mostly TikTok. But the idea that that doesn't make it like a monopoly issue is absurd.
- [37:56]
Jon Lovett
No, it's just. Yeah, no, for sure. I was raising it because some of the Netflix shows you see look like just a couple TikToks strung together.
- [38:04]
Tommy Vietor
For sure.
- [38:05]
Jon Favreau
Well, look like. I think the TikTok argument is a little. A little bit of a stretch. I don't think it's unfair to say that they're competing with YouTube. They are competing with YouTube. And also, by the way, YouTube spends a ton of money on original content. Now. It's not. It's not prestige scripted television. Like, there's a way in which I feel like a lot of people that are really worried about this and are right to be worried about this. I always feel like we're just sort of following behind these sort of inexorable changes and complaining about them, and also not really dealing with what I do think are complexities, which is these companies do spend huge amounts on original content, and I want movie theaters to survive. But then you look at the numbers, and the entire movie business this year is maybe gonna be $9 billion, the domestic box office, and it is dwarfed by the amount of money like Apple. Apple alone is gonna spend, what, like, almost $5 billion on content this year. Netflix is around 17 or 18. YouTube is $30 billion. Like, they're spending huge amounts of money.
- [39:06]
That, you know, television shows that we would say are some of the best television shows ever made. So I guess I would like to. I feel like the conversation needs to turn to what does it look like to put pressure on these companies and maybe put pressure on a deal like this to get to a better version of where we're heading, as opposed to constantly having a conversation about the dangers of consolidation and of Silicon Valley's, you know, invasion of Hollywood.
- [39:33]
Lucas Shaw
One.
- [39:42]
Jon Lovett
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Lucas Shaw
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- [41:07]
Jon Lovett
While we're talking about the economy, business and regulations, it's worth touching on the latest in artificial intelligence with a post on Truth Social Monday morning, Trump promised to sign an executive order this week that would attempt to sweep away any state regulations that try to guard rail AI. Here's some of what Trump wrote. There must be only one rule book if we are going to continue to lead in AI. There can be no doubt about this. AI will be Destroyed in its infancy. You can't expect a company to get 50 approvals every time they want to do something that will never work. What do you guys think? Think there's anything else behind Trump not wanting states to pass any AI regulations?
- [41:46]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I just think all these AI companies are racing as fast as they can to build the most powerful product and they believe that this is gonna be if not a winner takes all. A winner takes most industries. And the difference between being like number one and number two will be trillions of dollars. So they are trying to compete, they're trying to train models, they're trying to buy all the chips, they're trying to. They're competing for power, like literally like physical power from, you know, electricity. And they're spending billions of dollars, the stakes are so high and they just don't want any guardrails in the way. And they're. And they want the status quo and I think they're willing to pay for it. Like they're paying off the Trump administration. And you know, you have AI safety experts pointing out that restaurants now face more regulations and safety standards than AI companies. And the companies involved don't care. Right, Like Sam Altman doesn't care. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, they don't care. And so they know that Washington is broken, Congress won't get anything done. And that often the way regulation gets done in this country is California passes a law and then that becomes the de facto standard because we're so big that other, you know, every company follows it. And Trump is pretending that this executive order will preempt that. I don't think it's going to work in any way in practice. But these companies are all kissing his ass and pouring political favors in his pocket and showing up at the White House all the time and going to dinners and paying off to build the ballroom and whatever. And I think that's why he's doing this.
- [43:08]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I think the only positive in it is hoping that the reason he's doing this is because it looks like the hopes for passing something through Congress are falling apart. I know people were really worried about that, that a, and a provision was going to get snuck into this must pass defense bill because Congress is barely able to govern if that barely is generous. They end up sticking really important random bills attached to must fast bills like a defense, a military bill. So if that has fallen out, they're doing this as a cope. And to Tommy's point, yeah, won't have nearly the same impact, if any impact. So it Seems like he's doing it as a favor to his pals. While there are also people who genuinely believe that we are in a race against China. And anything that limits America's sort of rapac. This building of server farms and data centers and power plants to support them will mean we don't create the singular AI God before China does, at which point we'll all work for the Chinese version.
- [44:12]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, these people all paid for access, right? And they've got their access. They're best buddies with Trump now. And I think, I think persuading him on this is quite easy. And his staff, I think they sit down with him and they say, okay, look at the economy right now. We have an economy that's built on data centers and private prisons. Nothing else is really in health care. I guess the health care sector's growing. Nothing else is growing. And so if you want to be a successful president, you want the economy to continue to chug along as it is, you're going to have to support AI as fast as development of AI as fast as possible.
- [44:48]
Jon Favreau
Possible.
- [44:48]
Jon Lovett
Right? Then there's the Beat China thing. There's also the by the way, you don't want, and Trump has said this in truth posts before, you don't want these blue states like California. You don't want this commie California to develop some woke AI that we're going to have to contend with. Right now the challenge is a whole bunch of states have already started passing regulations on AI around political deepfakes, non consensual sexual imagery. They have passed regulations to try to prevent AI from being used to discriminate, but it is a complete fake order. Like it doesn't do anything. What's gonna happen is if a state has a regulation that the Trump administration doesn't like, the Trump administration can then decide through the DOJ to try to sue the state and see if that works. They'll probably say it's interstate commerce clause, that the feds are supposed to be able to regulate interstate commerce. The challenge is they're gonna make the argument that, like, we need one federal.
- [45:49]
Set of regulations on AI because you can't have a patchwork set of like 50 different regulations. But they don't have a federal set of regulations. So it's hard to tell the states, you can't do anything until maybe someday we do something in the federal government. It's one thing to say the federal regulation takes precedent over the state regulation. Like you have a good, maybe a good legal argument. There's, I don't know that you do by saying, we're getting around to it, but in the meantime, you can't do anything.
- [46:14]
Jon Favreau
It's not like it's like the health care vote. They are, they want to veto any legislative effort they don't agree with or that restricts these abilities company to operate across different states. But they just don't have a policy that they can coalesce around to regulate AI in the way that it obviously needs to be regulated. So they just are, they are of their. They can't do it. They don't, they cannot govern. They cannot put together a proposal to pass something. So they're gonna do this instead of that.
- [46:38]
Jon Lovett
You're right.
- [46:38]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, the stock market is entirely propped up by AI and he has a huge incentive to, to keep that bubble from bursting because it would be catastrophic. I do think also the crypto example is very instructive. Like, Donald Trump hated cryptocurrency until a bunch of crypto executives came to him and they dumped money on him and created super PACs, and all of a sudden now he loves it. He also hated big tech until they kind of bowed to the altar and now he's a fan. So I, I just think the China thing is just such bullshit to me because today Trump advanced that we, he will allow the sale of the H200 Nvidia chip to China, which is like, they're, they're just below their Blackwell series. It's like the best of the last generation chips, a very powerful chips. And so we're going to send like our second best chips. We're going to get rid of export controls on AI chips because we want to beat China. That makes absolutely no sense. And when you push them on that, they'll be like, well, if we don't give them our chips, they're going to make chips through Huawei. Like, you guys don't think that they're going to subsidize their biggest tech company anyway. I just, like, don't find it at all believable.
- [47:35]
Jon Lovett
It's a very weird argument. They're all, basically, the argument is we want to get them hooked on American technology so that they're dependent on the Nvidia chips. But it's also unclear whether China will actually say yes and buy the chips because they might think that it's like a backdoor security risk. In which case, what is the purpose of this whole thing? It's like, if they buy them, then, but they're also subsidizing Huawei. Like, then, then how are we getting them hooked on Nvidia technology.
- [48:06]
Tommy Vietor
And the Chinese, you know, we're going to do, we're going to buy Taiwan with these warships. That's what we're going to do.
- [48:11]
Jon Lovett
That's our policy. It's a, it's a David Sacks brainchild. Right. And the other argument they're making is like, well, by, by allowing Nvidia to sell some of these to China, it'll just make Nvidia more money. And if Nvidia has more money, they'll be able to help the United States beat China to the, to the AI super God again. Yeah, we don't, we don't know what we're racing towards.
- [48:29]
Jon Favreau
The other thing and by the way, I don't.
- [48:31]
Jon Lovett
Is it ag, AGI, right. Artificial general intelligence or. But there's no specific goal here. We're just racing.
- [48:37]
Jon Favreau
How many fucking dogs do you attach to the bobsled before it goes the speed of sound? It's like, I like don't. I'm like, I, I like, I'm really get. It's like a terrifying thing what's happening and maybe like the, the idea that, that they all have like, there's like genuine like old school kind of competition going on, trying to make the best product and get there first. And that we have seen over the years that in like technology there are all these economies where one wins and the rest fall. Google, there's other examples. But then it's like so you're all racing because you have to get there first. There is some sort of super intelligence that you don't understand and that will be smarter than us. And then, oh, by the way, we've spent the last decade building how many fucking data centers and server farms that are gonna, that are gonna.
- [49:24]
Jon Lovett
Are currently inflated value, that they all.
- [49:27]
Jon Favreau
Are pretending have more value than the things burn out and they have to replace them. It's like the, the, the, the, the like awareness of the bubble as we're in the bubble is very reminiscent of several previous terrible financial catastrophes that we've very recently been through.
- [49:43]
Jon Lovett
It is notable that a lot of the opposition to sort of the AI industry going at breakneck speed and specifically Trump's move today is coming from some people in his base. Prominent people, Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is one place where she diverged from Trump. Ron DeSantis has been leading the opposition to this move as well. He was out today with a statement critical of Trump's eo. What do you think? Is this like another sort of wedge issue with Trump's base that Democrats should Be taking advantage of here and maybe building new coalitions?
- [50:16]
Tommy Vietor
I think so. I mean, look, I think he's a fake populist and we should hammer him for it. And it's this issue. I mean, it's tech companies showering him with money and compliments and they get what they want. Want the President of Argentina kisses Trump's ass at CPAC, they got a $40 billion bailout. The crypto assholes get their special favors and policies. Like, was it the. The crypto national reserve. Remember that moment?
- [50:35]
Jon Favreau
Whatever happened to that?
- [50:36]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I don't know.
- [50:36]
Jon Favreau
Hey, somebody follow up on the crypto national reserve.
- [50:38]
Jon Lovett
Are we filming?
- [50:39]
Jon Favreau
How are we doing? How are we doing? How are we doing? How much is in the reservoir?
- [50:42]
Tommy Vietor
Well, we'll give it to the farmers. Pardoning all the people whose crypto we are going to seize. Cuts. Medicaid does nothing when health care prices go up, as we talked about a minute ago. I mean, I mean, so I, Yeah, like, I do think this is like a piece of the puzzle of just how rather than drain the swamp, it is just a. Washington is more bought and sold than ever. And you're hearing this case being made by conservative, like, you know, Nick Fuentes was just unloading on Trump on all these grounds, too. So it's coming from the left and the right. And I think it's a case worth making.
- [51:09]
Jon Lovett
I think it's also, it's. It. Corruption is a piece of it. I think for AI, it goes like, well beyond that as well. I mean, it is. The DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene have voiced concerns about the job loss. I mean, you've heard, you know, Tucker Carlson has had this debate with like, Ben Shapiro like a year ago or something, where I think Tucker said, you know, he would, if you could stop, we're gonna have these driverless cars. And if you could have a regulation stopping the creation of driverless cars because it's gonna get rid of all the truckers and all the trucking jobs in this country. He would do it. And so there's gonna be this massive potential job displacement that a lot of folks on the right, in a more sort of protectionist way are going to say, like, they don't. Like there is, like, what it's gonna do to our kids. It's sort of the social media phone argument on steroids. So you get a lot of some of the more religious conservatives concerned about that. So there are a host of reasons beyond just corruption that like the Republican base or the MAGA base is like, really worried about when it comes to AI and the polling bears this out as well. Like, you know, Harvard just did their big youth poll. And for among young people, only 14% said that AI will create more opportunities and 44% said that it will take away more opportunities. That's young people who are usually, you know, kind of enamored with new technology. Emerson just did a poll in Pennsylvania. 48% of voters think that AI will have a negative impact on the economy. Only 25% said positive. 55% of people in Pennsylvania believe that AI will decrease jobs in the industry they work in, personal thing. And then only 16% said increase. And then there's a big, huge pupil from the summer. AI will worsen our ability to think creatively. 53% believe that. Only 16% disagree. And form meaningful relationships. 50% agree with that. Only 5% disagree.
- [53:01]
Jon Favreau
One challenge is how many different kinds of technology AI represents because it is both something that will drive cars, it is something that will replace writers.
- [53:15]
There are so many implications of it, some of which are awesome and great, that we should be very much excited.
- [53:21]
Jon Lovett
About, some of which are by our medical sphere specifically.
- [53:24]
Jon Favreau
I think some of which are great tools for artists to, to use in ways that help their productivity. Some are purely parasitic and some that can only exist because they are drafting off of stolen art or using art to kind of replicate what an artist might do in a world where this technology didn't exist. Friends, all of this stuff has all these sort of negative consequences, but we're not, because Trump is in the pocket of these industries. There's so many ways in which we're not having those debates and there's no hope of any kind of real like reforms or regulations to, to rein that in. Like they, they've already trolled and stolen so much information to make their database of, of.
- [54:05]
Tommy Vietor
Of.
- [54:05]
Jon Favreau
Of language to turn, to turn around super Google.
- [54:09]
Tommy Vietor
So it's totally unsettling. I mean, parents are also just watching their kids use AI to cheat at school all day and they're not learning anything. And like, meanwhile, Australia is banning social media for kids under 16 and we're letting the same companies run by the same assholes figure out AGI like, this is a terrible setup, everyone. You don't really have to explain that to a lot of people.
- [54:27]
Jon Lovett
And it's, it's going to happen so much faster than any other technological development. I think that is one of the big differences here. I mean, it's, it is more powerful than past technological developments, but that's usually the case. But just the speed like we're all like, oh well, Trump's here now. Maybe, maybe we can figure this out, you know, in 2028. Like, it's happening. Like you said, the stuff is being stolen right now, the technology is being developed right now. It's all happening, happening.
- [54:49]
Jon Favreau
The other thing too is the all these sort of costs that are not being incurred by these companies that are being incurred by people who never signed up for them. Like, I saw a teacher being interviewed talking about how a big part of a teacher's job now is trying to figure out if AI wrote something and a student will generate an essay in 10 seconds that will take hours for that teacher to untangle. They didn't train to figure out what AI is.
- [55:13]
Jon Lovett
You know what the proposed solution for that is? Develop an AI that can help tell you whether the college essay was written by AI. That's seriously what it exists. Yeah. One thing for sure is that whatever happens, we would never want some commie blue state to pass any kind of regulation that would deprive our right wing influencers from using AI to anthropomorphize dead presidents for the sake of content, as Glenn Beck has apparently done with George Washington. Guys, let's listen.
- [55:40]
Lucas Shaw
If I may speak plainly, my countrymen.
- [55:45]
Tommy Vietor
The danger, the greed, greatest danger to.
- [55:47]
Jon Lovett
Our republic lies not in foreign arms or political faction.
- [55:51]
Tommy Vietor
But.
- [55:53]
Interrupt you for a second. Did you just dumb it down just a little?
- [55:56]
Lucas Shaw
Okay, let me speak to Americans.
- [56:00]
Jon Lovett
If I'm honest, America's biggest problem isn't political or economic. It, it's on moral. You know, where are the citizens who.
- [56:09]
Lucas Shaw
Value duty over comfort, principle over popularity?
- [56:13]
Jon Lovett
America was built to be a moral.
- [56:15]
Lucas Shaw
And self governing nation.
- [56:18]
Jon Lovett
So are you guys more or less worried about AI after that?
- [56:21]
Jon Favreau
Yes. If I does George Washington with some testosterone gel, who's like a big fan of like talking about looks maxing.
- [56:27]
Tommy Vietor
Why am I wearing the same shirt as George Washington?
- [56:29]
Jon Favreau
Why is George Washington wear the same shirt as you?
- [56:31]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, he's got sick hair. He's got nice flow.
- [56:33]
Jon Lovett
It's interesting that George Washington, they made him talk talk like we do today, but they didn't fix the hair. The hair is still this old.
- [56:41]
Jon Favreau
He looks like an Oompa Loompa is what he looks like.
- [56:44]
Jon Lovett
He does look like an Oompa Loompa. An Oompa Loompa. That sounds suspiciously like Glenn Bagne.
- [56:48]
Jon Favreau
You know, this is such a, like a, this is AI. It's like, this is what I mean, it's like it can drive a car, it can find new molecules to Cure diseases. It also functionally is the same as brainyquotes.net because you can just make it say, like, it's like, you know, reach for the stars. Gandhi. That's what this is. Just somebody putting their own looks like. We can make a face of George Washington saying whatever we want. Exciting.
- [57:11]
Tommy Vietor
He left the Blaze, I think, was his publication, to do this full time. I think this. This AI George, this is his job.
- [57:20]
Jon Favreau
AI George just got nominated for a Golden Globe.
- [57:24]
So that's exciting. Really work those reps. And just.
- [57:28]
Jon Lovett
Just so everyone knows, Glenn Beck has put that out as the preview, the full conversation. There's a full conversation that is not out yet, at least as of this recording.
- [57:36]
Jon Favreau
And a pretty intimate sex scene with Martha, which is exciting.
- [57:40]
Tommy Vietor
Just, like, couldn't be less compelling, whatever that was.
- [57:43]
Jon Lovett
Also like him having to. It's not like he just throws AI George Washington up on the screen and lets him go like he's interviewing him. He's like, no, no, no, slow down, slow down. And also speak, like, today. Come on. Dumb it down for us, AI George. What else will he have him do?
- [57:58]
Jon Favreau
It would be funny how you generate an AI George Washington. He's like, I will not proceed with this interview for even a moment longer until you let me see one of your magic dentists. Please help me. Please help me. I have oak teeth. I haven't had a good night's sleep in several years.
- [58:12]
Jon Lovett
And I still have slaves at home.
- [58:13]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And I do have slaves.
- [58:17]
Jon Lovett
It's my thing. Anyway, stuff like that makes you, like, okay, maybe we shouldn't worry about AI killing us all because it's doing that. But I do think that's. That's deceiving because so many people, like, their. Their first encounter with AI Is slop, garbage like that. And they're like, yeah, maybe it's not so bad. But, like, meanwhile, like you said, there's a lot of other things going on with AI that are a lot scarier than that.
- [58:37]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Can I make one. One pitch on how we talk about this? Because I do this, too. Everyone does this. AI will not be the thing that destroys our jobs or takes over our economy. It will be the people that own the company. It is a tool. It is not a person. It is a tool, and it's a very powerful tool. It's a tool that can displace whole.
- [58:52]
Jon Lovett
Parts, whole jobs and industries being created by very powerful tools.
- [58:55]
Jon Favreau
Very powerful tools are in charge. So it's. There's this way in which we feel like kind of. I don't know, like kind of a strapped to this thing that's. And we can't stop it. It's like. No, no, no. Like it is an important technology. It will have great uses. We decide that we have some say over it and we should, like, I think, take more agency.
- [59:14]
Jon Lovett
In a theoretical democracy.
- [59:15]
Jon Favreau
For sure, in a theoretical democracy. But when we say AI is stealing the jobs, there will be a person who presses the button who controls the company that makes the money.
- [59:23]
Tommy Vietor
Money.
- [59:23]
Jon Favreau
Those are the people who are taking the jobs. Yeah.
- [59:25]
Tommy Vietor
So Glenn Beck acquired a bunch of historical documents which he says he's now.
- [59:30]
Jon Lovett
Created a digital vault to put them.
- [59:32]
Tommy Vietor
On the blockchain to ensure that they're not tampered with. Who is tampering with historical documents?
- [59:37]
Jon Lovett
They're historical. Yeah. Aren't they in the public domain? Isn't that why they're historical documents?
- [59:41]
Jon Favreau
I think he's bothered by the fact that at the Library of Congress it now says they, them hold these truths to be self evident. And I think that was the part that really turned out to be.
- [59:49]
Jon Lovett
If you want to take a book out, the librarian is Marco Rubio. And so you have to get his permission.
- [59:53]
Jon Favreau
Right. And I think there's that part of the, the, the like where it says, you know, that like Jefferson was checking his privilege towards the end of the Declaration of Independence, that George. That and, and, and King George III was not creating enough space.
- [60:05]
Jon Lovett
Bad looking for liberty.
- [60:06]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. So I think, like, so I, so I have to understand why that is confusing. But sorry, Glenn, that's what's always been there.
- [60:13]
Tommy Vietor
He's so weird.
- [60:14]
Jon Lovett
All right, when we get back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw about the battle for Warner Brothers, what it actually means for all of us. Two announcements before we get to that. Big news, guys. For our listeners down under, we are bringing POD Save America Live to New Zealand and Australia for the first time ever. Join US for the 2026 Pod Save America Hopefully Just Visiting tour.
- [60:39]
Tommy Vietor
I do like that name.
- [60:40]
Jon Lovett
Give him any ideas over in the White House. We're headed to Auckland on February 11 and then three shows in Australia after that. Melbourne on February 13, Brisbane on February 14 and Sydney on February 16.
- [60:53]
Jon Favreau
Already getting the pronunciations right?
- [60:54]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, well, they have them here in the script for me. Thank God. I would have fucked that up. Go to cricket.com events to get tickets and use the code PSA downunder to get pre sale tickets. Now how exciting is this guy?
- [61:08]
Tommy Vietor
PSA down Under?
- [61:09]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, PSA down Under listen, I wanted PSA after dark, but you guys said no, we're married.
- [61:14]
Jon Lovett
Psa Dan under. Is that no?
- [61:16]
Jon Favreau
Oh, hey, sure.
- [61:16]
Tommy Vietor
I'll do that one too.
- [61:17]
Jon Lovett
Sign me up for Dan is coming too.
- [61:19]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, Dan's coming.
- [61:20]
Tommy Vietor
Whoa, easy.
- [61:22]
Jon Favreau
Okay.
- [61:24]
Tommy Vietor
Oh, that's the line.
- [61:25]
Jon Lovett
Okay, got it. Arbitrary. I hadn't gotten there yet.
- [61:29]
Jon Favreau
The point is Australia works on Dan's.
- [61:33]
Tommy Vietor
Glad you got there too.
- [61:34]
Jon Lovett
He didn't hear it. Down under. Down under. The newest. Also, this is another announcement. The newest book from Crooked Media Reads is coming out January 27th 7th, 2026. It's called Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind by one of our favorite political journalists, New York Times magazine writer Jason Zangerle. Why a book about Tucker Carlson? Why not? In a lot of ways, Tucker's rise is what made the Trump age possible. He is an extremely influential figure on the right and Jason's book gets inside. You know, what happened, how the, how the. How his rise came about. It's an excellent book.
- [62:10]
Tommy Vietor
It's so good. I've read it. It's a fantastic book. It is such a great. Like you follow Tucker's career, but it also traces the arc of the maga movement and how it's kind of lost it a little bit lately.
- [62:18]
Jon Lovett
You think? Really?
- [62:19]
Tommy Vietor
A little bit.
- [62:19]
Jon Lovett
A little bit. Book comes out January 27, but if you preorder a copy now, you can get 15% off with code Jason15@crooked.com books. What a code. That's cricket.com books and the code is Jason15. Yeah, it's not exactly yes we Dan or PSA down under, but it is Jason15.
- [62:40]
Jon Favreau
It's Jason151515.
- [62:42]
Tommy Vietor
It's like Adam22, but different.
- [62:53]
Jon Lovett
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- [64:10]
Lucas Shaw
Pandora makes it easy for you to find your favorite music, discover new artists and genres by selecting any song or album and we'll make you a personalized station for free download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.
- [64:25]
Jon Favreau
Joining me now is managing editor of Bloomberg News and author of Bloomberg's Screen Time newsletter. And the reporter who broke the story of Netflix's success. Successful bid to buy Warner Brothers, Lucas Shaw. Welcome to the pod.
- [64:35]
Lucas Shaw
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [64:37]
Jon Favreau
So why is Netflix, which has never grown via acquisition before, interested in buying Warner Brothers?
- [64:45]
Lucas Shaw
Two reasons, one offensive, one defensive. I think for offensive reasons. Look, it's a great asset, right? It's got one of the great film and television studios, one that's been around for more than a century, has shows that Netflix knows are popular already with its customers, like Friends, which used to be on Netflix, now on hbo, Max, a bunch of movies, it's got hbo, which is a premium brand to which Netflix once aspired and has since sort of eclipsed. And so if it can buy that, feed it in, get all of these hit shows that it can offer to its customers, it makes its proposition much stronger. And then defensive, it's got this new kid on the block, David Ellison, spending money like crazy because he's got it from his dad. And they, they don't want, he's already swallowed Paramount and they don't want to risk him adding Warner Brothers as well.
- [65:33]
Jon Favreau
So it seemed as though Paramount was caught off guard because they thought this was theirs to lose. Now Paramount is launching a hostile bid. But Paramount is a smaller company. Forget Netflix. It's a smaller company than Warner Brothers. So this is only possible because Ellison has his fortune. Plus, there's cash from the Saudis, the Qataris, the Emiratis. There's funds from Jared Kushner's investment firm. Twice as much of the money, at least from the bid that we, that we heard about last week comes from the Middle east, as comes from the.
- [66:10]
Lucas Shaw
Ellisons, the Ellison family, as well as this company, Redbird, which is a private equity firm. They would be the controlling shareholders, have a lot of the economic interests. But it was interesting on Monday morning where they issued one press release that didn't mention some of this other financing. And then in the filing that they had to put out, it did disclose. Look, I can't fully explain the thinking behind why kind of Middle Eastern petro states do what they do. They have been spreading their money around and investing in kind of diversifying beyond oil, trying to gain also, I think soft power through investments in sports and media. There's kind of a Saudi affiliated group that just bought or is the primary acquirer of Electronic Arts, the big video game publisher that makes Madden and other things. So I think they see an opportunity to buy an interesting sexy asset that will hopefully make money for them in the long run and give them more influence on a global stage. It also means that they're closely tied in business with the Ellison family, which is good people to be close to with the Kushners. And. And if Trump blesses it, also gets them another sort of point of contact with the Trump administration.
- [67:22]
Jon Favreau
So let's talk about that. Whether Trump blesses it, it's been interesting seeing it taken as a given that Jared Kushner being associated with the Elson bid is a sign that it would have a smoother path to approval. The kind of acceptance of the fact that there is so much sort of interpersonal relationships and just old school corruption here. At the same time, the Ellisons have spent a year doing a fair amount of bootlicking. And then Trump is asked about this. He says, oh, we gotta see, we gotta see. It would be quite a shame for them to have spent a year doing all that sucking up and end up with nothing to show for it.
- [68:00]
Lucas Shaw
Well, look, Ellison's got something already from Larry Ellison's close relationship at the White House, which is they got Paramount, right? They went after Paramount very aggressively.
- [68:13]
And got the deal approved reasonably quickly, all things considered. Now, I think you've got the President in a pretty good situation for him where he has two different companies, both of which want to do this deal. And even though he does not have the official power to say yay or nay, he obviously can have a tremendous amount of influence between his relationship with the DOJ and other regulatory agencies where, you know, Netflix is going to want to make sure that he's happy with their bid. And the Ellisons, who've already been very friendly to him in a lot of ways are going to do the same. So it positions him as something of a power broker, which, which he obviously likes.
- [68:57]
Jon Favreau
So in your own reporting, you found that Sarandos had done a lot to work on his Trump relationship. Can you talk about that and how, how strategic that was in advance of this?
- [69:07]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, I mean, look, Netflix, I think if you look at the management of the company, is one of the more democratic, by which I mean supportive of the Democratic Party, media companies, companies in the country. Right. Reed Hastings, the co founder, former CEO, has invested a lot of money, especially of late in political causes, has been a very vocal critic of President Trump. Ted Sarandos wife, Nicole Levant was an ambassador in the Obama administration, the Bahamas. So obviously as a result of that, I mean, the Obamas had a, I guess continue to have a production deal with Netflix and Sarandos is close to them. And my understanding is that when Trump came back into power in 2024, 25, Netflix looked around and said, we don't have a lot of relationships in his inner circle and we need to fix that. We are one of the, the biggest and most influential media companies in the world. Netflix has done a really good job over the years of largely evading kind of intense regulatory scrutiny. Now that they are at the size that they are, for that to continue, I think they couldn't be seen as sort of an enemy of the state, if you will, in the way that Trump is routinely attacking NBC or Disney and abc. Netflix doesn't want to be in that position. And so Ted Sarandos, the co CEO of Netflix, who's kind of the, the more charming schmoozy of the two co CEOs and the Hollywood one, had a dinner at Mar a Lago with President Trump last December, which was reported about at the time. It was a very long dinner. I think they, my understanding is they got along quite well at the dinner and had remained in touch since then. Texting, talking, meeting somewhat regularly, including most recently in kind of mid November where Ted had a meeting of more than an hour with Trump at the White House. Now keep in mind, they're not just talking about this deal. Right. Donald Trump has been talking a lot about tariffs on the film business that don't make a lot of sense that people in Hollywood want to influence in some way. There was some concern, I think, early in the administration that he might revisit the idea of net neutrality, which is something that Netflix has strong opinions about.
- [71:16]
And in the most recent meeting, obviously they wanted to talk about this deal. Because. Because Netflix was in the middle of what it knew would be a kind of a contentious process.
- [71:25]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, well, it's just, you know, you make the point that, you know, this ostensibly should be in the hands of regulators, and there's a sort of a formal process, and the president is not necessarily directly involved, yet Trump himself is saying it's up to him. And clearly the actors in this are very concerned of the ways in which he will get involved. So let's talk about what the administration could do. The head of the theater lobbying group called this an unprecedented threat to the global exhibition business. The WGA said the world's largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent. Roy Price, who was the former head of Amazon Studios, said the long prophesized death of Hollywood may finally arrive. These are dire, dire warnings about this. What are you hearing about why this.
- [72:14]
Lucas Shaw
This.
- [72:15]
Jon Favreau
Why people are so much more concerned about this deal than if the Paramount deal had gone through.
- [72:21]
Lucas Shaw
So I actually don't think that that's the case. It's just Netflix won, right? Or won the initial auction. And so people came out strongly against Netflix. I think some of the same people that you mentioned, not all of them would have. Would have been concerned about Paramount. Right. I think the guilds, for example, wgadj, representing writers and directors, they don't like the idea of a studio going away, which could happen if Paramount won. I think you're probably. I think it's the theatrical business. The movie theaters wouldn't be as worried about Paramount, because David Ellison has been very clear that he is a champion of movie theaters and wants to put movies in theaters, whereas Netflix has a long track record of releasing movies straight to the Internet and not wanting to have long stretches of movies being exclusive to theaters. Now, Netflix is saying in this case that they will kind of run Warner Brothers as it has been, and that means putting movies in theaters. But a lot of folks just don't believe that them. And then as for. You brought up Roy Price, he used to run one of the biggest competitors to Netflix. And I think there's a lot of concern, and certainly the argument that Paramount has made is that in streaming, Netflix, which is already the biggest player, would get even bigger and stronger.
- [73:35]
But look, the entertainment business is freaked out about Warner Brothers trading hands, no matter what. I think if you ask the average person, they just say, don't sell it. Stay independent. You don't need to do a deal. Deal. But it's one thing to sort of believe that Philosophically, it's another thing when David Ellison comes and starts throwing money at you. At a certain point, the shareholders do have an obligation to consider a deal, because if your Stock was at $12 and now someone wants to give you 30, that's a pretty good deal, right?
- [74:03]
Jon Favreau
Well, and I take your point that I agree that a lot of these, a lot of people that are being critical of this deal would also be critical of an Allison deal. But if this deal gets blocked, that is likely what happens. You know, when Disney acquired Fox's studio, the number of releases theatrically went down. Even though those are both companies that believe in the movies. Paramount and Warner Brothers look a lot more alike than Netflix and Paramount look alike. So the reason I ask that is only because Trump has a lot of leverage in this moment, moment. And I've seen a lot of talk about block this deal, this deal's better, this deal's worse. I wonder what happens if.
- [74:46]
People start thinking of the ways in which Trump could, through kind of regulators, the government, let's describe it as the federal government, not the vehicle of the godhead. But if the federal government decided to make some demands upon Netflix and its acquisition, are there changes to the deal that the WGA might like to see made, that the theaters would like to see made that would make it more appealing?
- [75:13]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, you brought up a point that was interesting because it's sort of the argument Netflix has made, which is that we have less obvious overlap or fewer kind of redundancies, synergies than Paramount. So, you know, we don't own a big studio, so we will continue to operate it as is. Whereas if Warner Brothers and Paramount came together, they can say that they're going to release more than 30 movies a year, but they probably won't do that. To your point about Disney and Fox, the numbers come down.
- [75:44]
There are the conditions that Netflix could agree to in the deal that would placate people in the entertainment business. And then there are those that I think would placate regulators, and I think they're not necessarily the same. If, if Netflix sort of contractually committed to putting movies in theaters. Now, I'm not sure they're going to do that, but let's say they did, that would certainly assuage the concerns of something like Cinemas United, which is, I think, the CEO you referenced earlier of kind of a theater lobbying group. If they committed to increasing overall spending, which, again, these are all things that they've already publicly said they're going to do, they will continue. Warner Brothers television studio will continue to produce shows for third parties. Those are things that would make people feel a little bit better. Those aren't the most normal conditions for a. The case against Netflix from a federal government standpoint wouldn't be what's going to happen to the movie theater business. Right. Unfortunately, certain businesses rise and fall over time, and it's not the federal government's job to inter. This is not like a business that matters for national security. We all love movies. We want theaters to continue to exist. The federal government's biggest, biggest kind of concern when it comes to this deal would be antitrust and whether Netflix has too much power in streaming. And so I think to make people more kind of comfortable on the streaming front, I could see Netflix agreeing to sell or not acquire sort of HBO streaming business in other parts of the world. Like, if they had to appease regulators in Europe or Latin America here, it's hard to see what they could do on that front. Their argument is just going to be, you combine Netflix and HBO and we still account for less TV viewing than YouTube. That's going to be the crux of their argument, right?
- [77:32]
Jon Favreau
No. Well, it's funny, because I guess where I'm at is we see all these sort of extraordinary interventions by the Trump administration and ways in which people treat Trump abnormally. Right. They lobby him personally. Jared Kushner being part of the deal makes the deal more attractive. And yet when it comes to how we talk about what the remedies could be, we all redound to the old style of remedies. But Trump seems to have been taken at least some kind of an interest in reviving Hollywood. He'd like to be seen as somebody that does that. Like, I wonder what happens if people. Like, if people put their heads together and say, what if we put together what we would like Trump to see, make, demand, what demands we would like to see Trump make of Netflix, irrespective of what these deals have traditionally look like.
- [78:19]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [78:20]
Lucas Shaw
If. So, if you said, okay, Donald Trump, you want to be seen as a savior of Hollywood, you have a bunch of folks lobby him and say, you know, you talked about tariffs, but what about this? Because tariffs don't actually make sense.
- [78:31]
Jon Favreau
Right? Right. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Netflix has put $5.8 billion on the table. If this falls apart for scale, right. The domestic box office in the United States is maybe gonna hit 9 billion if people go see Avatar. Right? Like, they put a ton of, like. But I'm serious, like, they've put a ton of money on the table. Right. Like that is leverage, not just as the between the parties making the deal. That's leverage the federal government has in this situation.
- [78:55]
Lucas Shaw
Right. I guess my question is, do you think that Donald Trump actually cares about some of those initiatives?
- [79:03]
Jon Favreau
I think Donald Trump.
- [79:07]
Cares about things in front of him and how it reflects on him. Him and Donald Trump, here's how you can save Hollywood is a story he would love to read. And I guess stepping back, I saw the WGA's statement, and I agree with the sentiment. I understand where they're coming from. But I just look at the last few years, and there's this kind of unaddressed contradiction in how people outside of the streamers have reacted to changes in the industry, which is, on the one hand, you see a lot of the arguments that have a lot of validity, and then the Roy Price arguments about consolidation. And then on the other hand, these companies are criticized for the ways in which they're damaging the industry, and yet they are spending.
- [80:00]
Extraordinary amounts of money on content every year. We are not where the peak was two or three years ago, but far more money will be spent making scripted television shows this year than, say, 10 years ago. Right. So there's an unaddressed conflict here or a contradiction here about what's actually happening to the industry. And I don't know if you feel that in talking to people about the ways in which these companies have brought a lot of money in, while at the same time the concentration has unintended consequences.
- [80:32]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [80:32]
Lucas Shaw
Well, I think you're also getting at why, just from an entertainment industry perspective, there's so much resistance to the Netflix deal in particular, because Hollywood remains an incredibly insular community, and it has never try, as Ted Sarandos has, and he is in many ways like the mayor of Hollywood, but he's never been able to quite take that mantle or position because Netflix has always been viewed as a little bit of an outsider. Right. And you have a lot of people who work for the various studios who still resent Netflix for the changes that have happened, rather than going, oh, well, maybe we fucked up in, like, not recognizing what was going to happen and better positioning ourselves. So I think that's where. That's. That's definitely where some of it comes from. And to your point about the contradiction, yeah, look, I got a call from a very successful producer late Friday who was like, why is everyone freaking out about the movie business? Netflix doesn't have duplication with Warner Brothers in this area. It will continue to make movies. And by the way, Netflix's Movie business has been pretty crappy for the last many years. Them buying a studio that actually makes good movies and putting it on the platform could be a good thing. They were actually more worried about the television business because Netflix has more kind of overlap there with Warner Brothers and thought there should be some job losses. But if you are looking at, at it, you know, Netflix has promised to make a smaller, kind of smaller cuts than Paramount has. Netflix says 2 to 3 billion in cuts, Paramount says 6. That's, that's a pretty big difference.
- [82:09]
Jon Favreau
How much of that is personal? How much of that is Zaslav just not wanting to do a deal with a Nepo baby?
- [82:17]
Lucas Shaw
I think personal egos always matter in this stuff. I mean, like we like to say, it's all about the numbers and that's where boards make their decision. But the fact that David Zaslov likes Ted Sarandos probably helps him. The fact that, I mean, during the process of the sale, if you're in a room and you sort of got like Ted Sarandos on one side and David Ellison on the other, there's no question that Ted is going to come off as smoother and a little more charming. And that matters. I do think push comes to shove, money talks. And so if the Paramount deal were clearly better than the Netflix deal, Warner Brothers would have taken it.
- [82:54]
Jon Favreau
And what happens to CNN in all this? So Netflix doesn't want the cable companies. Ellison was interested in the cable companies, including some kind of a way of putting CNN and CBS together. But if the Netflix deals goes through, that would mean a new company would exist that David Ellison could potentially acquire anyway.
- [83:16]
Lucas Shaw
He could, but I don't think he's interested in just the cable networks are like the tax to get the stuff that he wants. So I don't think that he would go and buy them. Yeah, if the Netflix deal is going to happen, they would spin off CNN and a bunch of other cable networks into a separate asset first. And then what remains the studio and streaming would be acquired by Netflix. Comcast already did a version of this where they spun out a bunch of their cable networks into something called Versant, which has Ms. Now, formerly known as msnbc.
- [83:44]
Jon Favreau
Miz Now.
- [83:44]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, Ms. Now.
- [83:47]
But so no, I don't think David Ellison would go after. I don't think David Ellison wants cnn. It's like nice to have. But he wants the studio. He wants Warner Bro Studio. He wants the HBO streaming service. Of all those things, the networks are the third most appealing part.
- [83:59]
Jon Favreau
So that, that's interesting because if I'VE not seen that talked about enough because I see a lot of people saying how bad this deal would be.
- [84:06]
Jon Lovett
Right.
- [84:06]
Jon Favreau
But I do think there's something.
- [84:07]
Lucas Shaw
People are already assuming that Barry Weiss is going to be in charge of the whole thing. And, yeah, there's been a lot of.
- [84:13]
Jon Favreau
Well, I just. A lot of concern what happens. Like, you know, the Netflix deal gets killed. People that have said it should be stopped get what they want. The Ellison deal happens. I do think there's whatever. Like, whatever approval problems there could be. It seems clear that, like, because it's smaller, the argument against antitrust is stronger for Warner Brothers and Paramount. And all of a sudden you have Middle Eastern petro states to use your words, own a big chunk of, not just Warner Brothers, but also cnn.
- [84:45]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [84:46]
Lucas Shaw
You know, it's the. It's the kind of fact that in almost any other time would likely be disqualifying for a bid. And there was a point at which the Paramount bid had Chinese money in it, too.
- [85:01]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, Tencent pulled out a couple weeks ago. Right.
- [85:03]
Lucas Shaw
Because Tencent had been an investor in Skydance, David Ellison's initial company. All that stuff would normally be disqualifying. But obviously the current administration has really likes the relationships in the Gulf region. Jared Kushner does a lot of business in that area, and they don't seem too concerned about the presence of Middle Eastern money in the bid. I've certainly spoken with people who are.
- [85:31]
But that doesn't seem like something that President Trump is gonna kill a deal over.
- [85:39]
Jon Favreau
Well, two great options for a great American company.
- [85:43]
Lucas Shaw
What would be your preferred outcome?
- [85:46]
Jon Favreau
To have Kamala Harris.
- [85:48]
Lucas Shaw
No deal.
- [85:49]
Jon Favreau
Have Kamala Harris give a different answer about why she'll be different than Joe Biden on the fucking View. But, no, my actual feeling about this, I have no idea. I have no idea. But I do feel like post, even into the strike, post strike, there's a way in which I just constantly feel like. Like the people inside the industry are kind of running behind the ways it's changing and asking it to stop. And I would just say, I don't know what it looks like, but I would be interested in people who really feel passionately about why a deal like this is dangerous to say, this deal should be stopped. But if it goes through, here are the things that we would hope an administration trying to save Hollywood would propose. And I would be interested in that conversation because. Because right now, it's.
- [86:40]
Which.
- [86:42]
We'Re at the bus stop with a bindle, and it's like, who's gonna which terrible ride are we gonna take? But I'd be really interested in what it would look like for someone to come up with creative ideas for what a company with the scale of Netflix could do for theatrical releases.
- [87:02]
And for bringing more production back to California, New York, the United States. So that, to me, is. Is what I'm interested in.
- [87:10]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah. No, look, I think you have identified something that bothers me a lot in my coverage of the entertainment business, which is that the people who complain about the ways in which the industry have changed are not really offering proactive solutions. They're just sort of trying to make it go back to the way things were. And that never works.
- [87:30]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [87:31]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [87:32]
Jon Favreau
And it's hard to grapple with. With, like, there's nuance here. Netflix has made extraordinary movies and shows. Some of the best shows are being made by Apple, a company that was not in this business till a few years ago. Right. Like, everybody, everybody. If you need to change the subject over the holidays, you'll say, are you watching Pluribus? Right. That's made by the phone company. So, you know, it's. It's just to me, like, I feel like I. I am long on people talking about how dangerous all this is and short on the practical changes that would recognize that we're not going back.
- [88:11]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [88:11]
Jon Favreau
And could you go find some of those? Can you go talk to some of your people and come back with some of those?
- [88:15]
Lucas Shaw
I will work on that. I'll put together some bullet points and get a oner for the president.
- [88:21]
Jon Favreau
Lucas Shah, thank you so much for your time. Good to talk to you.
- [88:23]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [88:29]
Jon Lovett
That's our show for today. Thanks to Lucas Shaw for coming on. Thanks to AI George Washington for lending us his voice. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilic Frank and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelaviev, David Toles, and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
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Jon Favreau
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