David Ellison was among Trump’s White House attendees Thursday night for the state dinner commemorating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Washington, D.C.
The CEO dined with the president, despite Trump’s ongoing feud with the press this week and CNN, the news network Ellison is due to acquire in the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, being barred from covering the White House event themselves.
CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins shared the news Thursday with a full guest list for the state dinner, which was published by the White House communications team.
Representatives for Paramount declined to comment for this story.
Elsewhere on the state dinner guest list were tech world elite like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Apple’s Tim Cook, SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — along with conservative media hosts Bret Baier, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham of Fox News.
Ellison’s attendance is of particular interest given his pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, his need for a federal judge to approve the settlement reached this week with California State Attorneys General Rob Bonta, and Trump’s continued attacks on the free press — one major entity of which Ellison is slated to acquire with CNN.
The executive has long courted Trump as an ally in his push for the Paramount-WBD merger, and Trump’s DOJ approved the acquisition for $110 billion in June. Along the way, the new CBS News leadership following Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount has pushed the network further to the right. Ellison’s billionaire father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is also a longtime Trump ally.
CNN, meanwhile, was blocked from covering the state dinner at the White House on Thursday, with anchor Erin Burnett confirming the breaking news live on air just hours after a federal judge ordered White House access be granted CNN, MS NOW and Politico despite Trump’s ban over the weekend.
“CNN denied access moments ago to cover the guest arrivals of President Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, blocked after a judge shot down Trump’s ban to keep CNN, Politico and MS NOW out of the White House grounds,” Burnett said.
