Jon Stewart has a terrifying outlook for CNN now that the president’s desired media company, Paramount, is poised to take over Warner Bros., CNN’s parent company.
“I’d be astonished if they don’t walk in there and go like, ‘Eh, nice show you got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Stewart quipped on his podcast, Weekly Show, on Wednesday. “I think the kinds of changes that you’re seeing at CBS are in the offing, and he’s got a much more personal grudge against CNN than he does against CBS,” Stewart explained.
Netflix backed out of its bid to buy Warner Bros.’ studios and streaming properties last week, paving the way for Trump’s buddy, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, to buy the company for billions of dollars, cobbled together with overseas cash.
“The Saudis, I mean—look, look at the financing. There’s a lot of money from the Middle East that’s also going through there,” Stewart said Wednesday.
Though Netflix’s offer was initially chosen over Paramount’s, the streamer faced an uphill battle from MAGA in the steps that followed to close the deal. “I was not surprised at all,” Stewart said, that Netflix’s bid for Warner Bros “ended with such a weird kind of whimper.”
He added, “I never thought Netflix had a chance, to be honest with you. Because of how clearly the president wanted a loyalist.”
CNN staffers are reportedly panicking, according to sources who told multiple outlets they expect a CBS-style MAGA makeover, the same as the one Ellison gave that network when his Skydance gobbled up Paramount last year.
Stewart predicted that those staffers are probably right to be scared of what comes next if the deal goes through as planned.
“I have a feeling he’s gonna go in there. And their studio, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that looking more like the Oval,” Stewart said. “You’re like, are those gold cherubs behind Wolf Blitzer?”
Stewart also predicted that Trump would be “more involved in that” network takeover than the CBS one. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these media properties was handed over to Trump Inc., that Don Jr. had his hands in.”
He continued, “Those guys run a drone company, and as far as I know, they’re not, either one of them, real aeronautics guys. I would not be surprised to see, at one point, Trump going like, ‘Why isn’t my…why are the Ellisons getting all that? Why isn’t my family getting a taste of this empire?’”
Stewart joked that the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “will go in there and develop a mall around it.”
Stewart concluded, “It’s so explicitly corrupt that it’s almost breathtaking.”
