Sen. Elizabeth Warren condemned the Paramount-Skydance deal on Thursday shortly after the FCC approved the $8 billion merger by a vote of 2-1.
“Trump’s government just approved Paramount’s merger with Skydance. Sure looks like they paid Donald Trump $36 million for this merger,” she wrote on X. “Bribery is illegal no matter who is president.”
“Trump approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance, another giant media company. This could be corruption, and here’s the reason why,” Warren said in an accompanying video. “Maybe you saw that Stephen Colbert’s show was canceled last week. Well, just three days before it was canceled, Colbert called out Trump and Paramount, which is CBS’s parent company, for making a deal that looks like a quote, ‘big fat bribe.’ Those were his words.”
“So what’s that quote, unquote, ‘potential bribe’ that Colbert was referring to? Trump filed a sham lawsuit against CBS, but instead of fighting it, CBS’s parent company Paramount paid Trump $16 million to his future presidential library. So you got to ask, why’d Paramount do that if the suit was quote, ‘meritless?’ Well, maybe because they needed Trump to approve their multi-billion dollar merger, which Trump just did,” she continued. “The appearance of this wink, wink deal basically lets every other company and every other billionaire know that Trump is open for business, apparently happy to accept offers in exchange for favors.”
“On top of that, this deal is bad for competition and could make it more expensive for you to stream your favorite TV shows or movies or sports or whatever,” the senator added. “So just like I’ve been doing for weeks, I’m calling for an urgent independent investigation into this Paramount deal to see if this was actually bribery. And make no mistake, these CEOs may think that they can get away with anything they want, but they are not immune from the law. Bribery is still illegal.”
FCC Clears Paramount-Skydance Merger
“None of us can be silent about this, because you better believe Donald Trump isn’t stopping here. Already he’s seemingly running the same play by suing the Wall Street Journal for publishing a story that Trump doesn’t like about his apparent relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” Warren concluded. “But every single one of us needs to show Trump and the CEOs that we see what they are doing, and we will not be silenced.”
The long-awaited approval comes after a 251-day wait and just one day after Skydance agreed to appoint an ombudsman at CBS to review complaints of bias and to eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Paramount.
It also comes three weeks after Paramount reached a $16 million legal settlement with President Donald Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Warren, as well as fellow Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden, had already launched an investigation into whether Trump and Skydance Media CEO David Ellison cut a side deal to secure regulatory approval. The trio also questioned whether Trump and/or Skydance were involved in getting “The Late Show” cancelled.
