{"id":16442,"date":"2025-12-09T14:20:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T14:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/netflix-deal-to-buy-warner-bros-could-be-a-problem-trump-says\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T14:20:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T14:20:26","slug":"netflix-deal-to-buy-warner-bros-could-be-a-problem-trump-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/netflix-deal-to-buy-warner-bros-could-be-a-problem-trump-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix deal to buy Warner Bros. &#8216;could be a problem,&#8217; Trump says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1765230080000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>                                    <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                                                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; President Donald Trump has suggested that a deal struck by <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/netflix-warner-acquisition-studio-hbo-streaming-f4884402cadfd07a99af0c8e4353bd83\">Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a><\/span>  &ldquo;could be a problem&rdquo; because of the size of the combined market share. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question about it,&rdquo; Trump said Sunday, answering questions about the deal and various other topics as he walked the red carpet at the <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-kennedy-center-honorees-awards-ceremony-medal-5f4b60fb514f978d34e3468a711f0132\">Kennedy Center Honors<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>But asked again during a White House event with farmers a day later, Trump said he &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t know anything about the deal.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I know the companies very well, I know what they&rsquo;re doing,&rdquo; Trump said, while also adding that he had to &ldquo;see what percentage of market they have.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The president also said, &ldquo;None of them are particularly great friends of mine,&rdquo; but added, &ldquo;I want to do what&rsquo;s right.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>His second round of comments came after Paramount launched a <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/paramount-warner-bros-discovery-netflix-trump-347540ae7a4f83fced833fe882f25680\">hostile takeover offer<\/a><\/span>  for Warner Bros. Discovery, backed by a group of investors that includes an equity firm founded by Trump&rsquo;s son-in-law Jared Kushner. <\/p>\n<p>Trump said he had not spoken to Kushner about the matter, and suggested instead that his son-in-law is &ldquo;trying to work on Gaza,&rdquo; a reference to Kushner&rsquo;s work to promote a <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news-12-07-2025-1dc3f566e5b8c1062c07bc8344e1286e\">U.S.-backed ceasefire<\/a><\/span>  to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. <\/p>\n<p>The Republican president has said he will be involved in the decision about whether the federal government should approve the $72 billion Netflix-Warner deal. If approved by regulators, the merger would put two of the world&rsquo;s biggest streaming services under the same ownership and join Warner&rsquo;s television and motion picture division, including <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/superman-box-office-dc-james-gunn-e66bcc163a8aebf01a25a8b2e7dc08f4\">DC Studios<\/a><\/span>with Netflix&rsquo;s vast library and its production arm.<\/p>\n<p>The deal, which could reshape the entertainment industry, has to &ldquo;go through a process and we&rsquo;ll see what happens,&rdquo; Trump said Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p>In his first comments at the Kennedy Center, Trump was more effusive in his praise of Netflix, calling it &ldquo;a great company.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve done a phenomenal job. Ted is a fantastic man,&rdquo; he said of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, noting that they met in the Oval Office last week before the deal was announced Dec. 5. &ldquo;I have a lot of respect for him but it&rsquo;s a lot of market share, so we&rsquo;ll have to see what happens.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Asked Sunday if Netflix should be allowed to buy the Hollywood giant behind &ldquo;Harry Potter&rdquo; and HBO Max, <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/donald-trump\">the president<\/a><\/span>  said, &ldquo;Well that&rsquo;s the question.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They have a very big market share and when they have Warner Bros., you know, that share goes up a lot so, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be involved in that decision, too. But they have a very big market share.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Sarandos made no guarantees at their meeting about the merger if it is approved, Trump said, adding that the CEO is a &ldquo;great person&rdquo; who has &ldquo;done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>He repeated that a merger would create a &ldquo;big market share&rdquo; for the company.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question about it. It could be a problem,&rdquo; Trump said. <\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>Associated Press writer John Carucci contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-netflix-warner-bros-merger-problem-f3e317b61899d34ce507ba38af4a2934\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; President Donald Trump has suggested that a deal struck by Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery &ldquo;could be a problem&rdquo; because of the size of the combined market share. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question about it,&rdquo; Trump said Sunday, answering questions about the deal and various other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}