Callum Borchers

President Donald Trump knew right away how he felt about AT&T’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. He hated it. “It’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” Trump said on the day the deal was struck in October 2016, adding that, if he were elected, his administration would block the purchase. Judge Richard Leon considered the matter for several months and in a lengthy opinion June 12 ruled that President Trump’s take, shot from the hip, was off the mark. The merger of media giants can move forward, despite legal objections by the Justice Department.

[Commentary] AT&T's hiring of Michael Cohen in January 2017 to advise the company on an $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner looked like a smart strategy. In retrospect, AT&T's contract with Cohen appears to have been a complete failure. In November 2017, 10 months after AT&T retained Cohen, the Justice Department sued to block the company's purchase of Time Warner, citing antitrust concerns. Whatever efforts Cohen made to grease the skids did not work. The only visible evidence of President Trump taking a friendlier posture toward AT&T during the period when the company p

In the alternate reality constructed by some of President Donald Trump's media boosters, the big question Zuckerberg must answer is not about privacy or propaganda but about Facebook's alleged bias against conservatives. To scrutinize Facebook on the matters of principal interest to members of Congress would be to contribute to doubts about whether Trump won on his own. So, as Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees and the House Commerce Committee, pro-Trump voices in the media are obscuring the main subjects.

[Analysis] President Trump's tweet that CNN President Jeff Zucker's “job is in jeopardy” is more than mere gossip. It carries an implied threat because President Trump could influence Zucker's employment status. The Justice Department is suing to block AT&T's $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, CNN's parent company. What could move President Trump to drop his protest? Ousting Zucker would certainly fit into an appeasement effort.

On the morning of April 2, President Donald Trump tweeted, "So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased.

By Fox News's own admission, a retracted report in May about the deceased Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was bad journalism. Nevertheless, the network is well-positioned to fend off a lawsuit brought by Rich's family that alleges “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” according to legal experts.  The Rich family would have to demonstrate that Fox News's actions were “outrageous,” which sounds colloquial but is actually a technical term and “a fairly high standard,” according to Doris Brogan, a law professor at Villanova University.

It was reported that special counsel Robert Mueller's team is interested in President Donald Trump's role in drafting a misleading statement to the New York Times in the summer, about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that involved Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.  Mueller's team already has questioned several White House officials about the statement and that “some lawyers and witnesses who have sat in or been briefed on the interviews have puzzled over Mueller's interest in the episode.

Convincing President Donald Trump not to blink first during the government shutdown was a challenge that required coaxing by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to The Washington Post's Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey. Parker and Dawsey reported that the president's aides employed another tactic, too, as they tried to curb President Trump's urge to offer a deal that might have cost the GOP more than it ultimately gave: "The White House also made sure that senior administration officials, as well as top surrogates, were out on television pushing the president's message.

3:04 p.m. December 20, 2017: “This just came out,” said President Donald Trump. “Two minutes ago, they handed it to me. AT&T plans to increase U.S. capital spending [by] $1 billion and provide [a] $1,000 special bonus to more than 200,000 U.S. employees, and that’s because of what we did. So that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good.” The Republican lawmakers surrounding the president applauded. The moment represented a big win for AT&T, which Trump's Justice Department is suing to block an $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner.

Disney's $52.4 billion holiday shopping spree puts 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets under Mickey Mouse's Christmas tree but leaves the Fox broadcast network, Fox News and Fox Business with Rupert Murdoch.  “This merger seems to be explicitly not about the news businesses,” said Ben Gomes-Casseres, a former World Bank economist who specializes in mergers and acquisitions at the Brandeis International Business School. Ah, but what about side effects? What might Murdoch do with his pared-down company? And will Disney, with all its new toys, devote sufficient attention to ABC News?