Dylan Byers:
Well, look, it certainly seems that way.
I mean, all available evidence suggests that the answer is yes. And I would say, in the business community, certainly in the media community right now, there’s quite a bit of anxiety about a sort of pay-for-play regulatory environment, in which case, if you need any deal to get done, any merger, any acquisition, you might be forced to cough up — the number seems to be — whether it’s Disney or Paramount, the number seems to be $16 million to the Trump Presidential Library.
Now, this is one of those things that has the benefit of, there are a lot of — you can point to a settlement. You can point to FCC approval. You can point to the fact that those came within days of each other and that the regulatory review process for this took a lot longer than it otherwise might have. And you can draw your own conclusions there.
But, of course, this is one of those things where, without the hard evidence, without the smoking gun, it’s the sort of thing that the administration and the FCC is going to be able to get away with.
And in many ways, I would just cite the dissenting voice, the lone FCC commissioner who actually voted against this deal, who talked about overreach by the FCC and capitulation by Paramount.
And so long as everyone plays ball here, so long as Paramount is willing to make that $16 million settlement, so long as Skydance, the new owners who are coming in, are willing to agree to certain FCC provisions, like getting rid of DEI or hiring an ombudsman to ensure that there’s no bias at the network, and allowing FCC to dictate editorial controls, then you run into a position where, call it what you will, this is the way that deals get done, at least so long as Trump is in office.
