‘Using DOJ to Commit a Criminal Act’
In the next two months the Dept. of Justice is expected to approve or deny a multi-billion dollar media merger: AT&T with Time Warner. According to the New York Times, the Trump White House has been debating using the DOJ to block the merger in retaliation for what the President calls CNN’s “fake news” reports that don’t show Trump in a positive light. Why? Time Warner owns CNN.
“White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T,” The New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card.”
That the president or officials in his administration are even thinking of using the DOJ to score a major attack on the free press because it doesn’t report as he would like is a scandal of epic proportions.
A former DOJ chief spokesperson on Twitter calls it a “criminal act”:
“Did the White House Just Use the Time Warner-AT&T Deal to Threaten CNN?” is the headline at Vanity Fair, which notes, “perhaps no news network has received as much attention from Trump as CNN, whose relationship with the former Apprentice host took a uniquely bizarre turn over the weekend when the president tweeted a video of himself pummeling a man with CNN’s logo superimposed over his face.”
Some responses via Twitter:
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Image by Hermann Luyken via Wikimedia
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