President Donald Trump says he will not be personally involved in the Justice Department\u2019s pending antitrust review of Netflix\u2018s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n
Trump told NBC News anchor Tom Llamas that he made the decision to leave the process to the Justice Department during a pre-recorded interview that will air Sunday in advance of NBC and Peacock\u2019s telecast of the Super Bowl. In December, days after Netflix and WBD sealed an $83 billion merger agreement, Trump told reporters \u201cI\u2019ll be involved in that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this week, Trump told Llamas that he\u2019s changed his mind, even though he\u2019s been contacted by \u201cboth sides\u201d in the transaction.<\/p>\n
Popular on Variety<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t been involved,\u201d Trump told the \u201cNBC Nightly News\u201d anchor in a clip aired by NBC News as a preview for the full sit-down set to run before the big game on Sunday. The pre-Super Bowl presidential interview with an anchor from the host network has been a tradition on the NFL\u2019s big day since President George W. Bush first did so in 2004.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must say, I guess I\u2019m considered to be a very strong president. I\u2019ve been called by both sides. It\u2019s the two sides, but I\u2019ve decided I shouldn\u2019t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it,\u201d Trump said, per an NBC News transcript.<\/p>\n
Trump acknowledged that Netflix\u2019s proposed deal to acquire Warner Bros. is complex and the antitrust concerns about its long-term impact on the streaming TV marketplace are significant. He also nodded to the ongoing skirmish between Netflix and Paramount Skydance as the latter keeps up its campaign to snare WBD away from Netflix.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a theory that one of the companies is too big and it shouldn\u2019t be allowed to do it, and the other company is saying something else,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re beating the hell out of each other \u2014 and there\u2019ll be a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: RhinoEasy News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump says he will not be personally involved in the Justice Department\u2019s pending antitrust review of Netflix\u2018s proposed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}