Bribe Wars

Who will win the bribe wars?

Donald Trump says he is going to involve himself in the bidding wars for Warner Bros., no matter how unethical it may be. It should be noted that Jared Kushner is one of the players. I would bet that Paramount invited Jared Kushner to be a part of their team just because he is Donald Trump's corrupt son-in-law. Paramount has already learned that bribing Trump pays.

Paramount was in negotiations to sell to Skydance and was waiting for FCC approval. What seemed to have helped that approval along was paying Trump $16 million in a settlement over a bogus and bullshit lawsuit brought by Trump over how a 60 Minutes interview was edited involving Kamala Harris. Who knew that you could sue for how a TV segment is edited that doesn't even involve you. It probably also did not hurt their cause when they fired Stephen Colbert.

Last Friday, Netflix announced its plan to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business for $83 billion. The boards of both companies approved the deal.

But three days later, Paramount stuck its finger in the pie and launched what’s known as a hostile takeover bid, bypassing the board of Warner Bros. Discovery and offering its shareholders $30 per share, the equivalent of $108 billion, to sell the company.

Warner Bros. is home to Looney Tunes, Harry Potter, DC Comics, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, HBO, and Max, among other titles.

We can't even ask what will happen to movies in theaters in the future, or streaming services, until we know who is going to own Warner Bros. I have Netflix, I have a subscription to Paramount+ because that came with my Walmart membership, and I had just signed up for HBO Max or their $2.99 Black Friday deal for the rest of the year. Where will I watch Supergirl when it comes out in June?

“I’ll be involved in that decision,” said Trump last Sunday at the Kennedy Center while he was giving the rock band Kiss an honor that’s only now slightly more prestigious than the FIFA Peace Prize.

Politicians are not supposed to be involved with regulators, but as we all have learned, Donald Trump cares more about what is on TV than he does about the price of eggs. After all, he believes affordability is a hoax, along with climate change. Of course, he also believes windmills give whales cancer.

Skydance has been after Warner Bros. for a while, but they were outbid last week by Netflix, so they went with the hostile takeover route. Skydance Media was founded in 2006 by David Ellison, the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison. The Ellisons positioned themselves as allies of Trump right after the election, realizing kissing his ass and bribing him was good for business.

If Netflix wins, it would not take over the Warner Bros. Discovery cable unit; instead, a separate public company controlling channels like CNN, TNT, and Discovery would be carved out by the third quarter of 2026. But if Paramount wins, they plan to take over the cable unit and make major changes to CNN, which will be very appealing to Donald Trump, who has feuded with the network for years and has called it “fake news.” Paramount already put Bari Weiss, a critic of “woke” culture, in charge of CBS News.

David Ellison has offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner Bros., he’d make big changes to CNN. Ellison was sitting in Trump's box at the Kennedy honors last Sunday.

Warner Bros., Paramount, and Netflix are all movie studios, which means there will be much less competition for consumers and everyone involved in the movie business. There will also be less competition for news if Paramount wins. At this point, the lesser of all evils is Netflix.

Since Jared Kushner's private equity firm is invested in Paramount's offer, that means the Saudis are invested in the offer. A trust controlled by the murdering Mohammed Bin Salman invested $2 billion into Jared Kushner's equity firm.

There are bad guys all over this shit.

Creative note

I drew this cartoon this morning, though it was interrupted by my occupational therapist. Still, I'm not griping about that. I wanted to draw the Paramount logo on the wall behind the cigar-smoking business dudes, but I didn't have room for it, and thank God for that. It would have been pretty difficult with an uncooperative right hand. Yes, I drew the bulk of this cartoon with my right hand while coloring it mostly with my left.

I feel like I have to add that last part because someone asks me every day about which hand I drew with, sometimes even after I included it in the blog.

Kevin Necessary

I saw Kevin's latest cartoon this morning, and I really liked it, but I failed to notice the flies. I didn't notice the flies until I received his Substack email where he acknowledged me. As you may recall, I recently received an email from a newspaper editor, adding a little pressure to stop drawing flies and stink lines around Donald Trump, calling it immature and gross. And as you may have noticed over the past few days, the flies and the steam lines have remained. Once again, Kevin Necessary has given me support and great friendship.

Maybe instead of drawing Pizza Rat, other cartoonists could support me by drawing flies with Trump in their next cartoons.

Keith Brown

If you have a copy of my book, Tales from the Trumpster Fire, you will notice in the back pages an ad for a book titled The Wages of Sin, a collection of cartoons by cartoonist Keith Brown. I never met Keith, but because we had the same publisher, Mr. Media Books, I was able to communicate with him a good bit. It was through Keith that I found out our publisher, Bob Andelman, had died in 2020, shortly after my book came out. And I found out today through another colleague that Keith has passed away. I'm very sorry to hear that, and I wish I had talked to him over the past few years. My condolences to his fans, friends, and family.

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