OAN Staff Cory Hawkins
12:24 PM – Thursday, December 11, 2025
President Donald Trump recently asserted that it is “imperative” that left-wing news outlet CNN is sold alongside its parent company, as Warner Bros. Discovery prepares for a potential merger with Netflix.
“It’s imperative that CNN be sold … I think CNN should be sold, because I think the people running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,” Trump said.
“I don’t think they should be entrusted with running CNN any longer. I think any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately, but I don’t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don’t think that should be allowed to continue,” the president added.
President Trump addressed the flurry of questions regarding a possible CNN overhaul after Paramount CEO David Ellison recently paid him a visit in Washington, where Ellison reportedly promised sweeping changes to the network.
“I will probably be involved, maybe involved in the decision. It depends. You have some good companies bidding on it,” Trump continued.
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Paramount conceded defeat in a fierce bidding war to streaming powerhouse Netflix, which settled the deal for nearly $83 billion. However, Paramount fired back on Monday with a takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), backed by funding from Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and a lineup of sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
Netflix reps later made it clear that it was mostly interested with WBD’s studio and streaming assets — like Warner Bros. films and HBO Max — showing no interest in networks like CNN.
Trump’s early qualms about the Netflix acquisition center on antitrust red flags, warning that it could balloon the streamer’s already dominant market share. Seizing the moment, Paramount sweetened its pitch to WBD shareholders at $30 per share, touting the full-cash offer as a superior path forward.
“None of them are particularly great friends of mine, you know; just, I want to, I want to do what’s right.” Trump added.
Networks such as TNT and CNN would reportedly become a part of a separate public company if federal regulators approve the deal with Netflix.
This week, President Trump dug into a CNN reporter who had asked him about the War Department releasing a video of a second strike on a suspected drug trafficking vessel in September.
“You must be CNN,” Trump said. “You know you work for the Democrats,” he said, adding, “You’re basically an arm of the Democrat Party.”
Trump filed a defamation lawsuit in 2022 accusing CNN of defamation, which encompasses both libel for written statements and slander for spoken ones, over the use of the phrase “Big Lie” to describe Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal later dismissed the case on July 29, 2023, ruling that CNN calling his claims a “Big Lie” was protected opinion under the First Amendment, not a verifiable false statement of fact.
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