Don't Let Trump "Obliterate" CNN
Attorneys general must sue to prevent Paramount-Warner Brothers merger
A federal judge ruled recently that the name of our disgraced chief executive had to be removed from the Kennedy Center, letter by letter.
And those letters were indeed stripped from the exterior of the arts center a few days ago.
This seemed perfectly fitting, because it meant that Trump, who claimed falsely in June 2025 to have “obliterated” the nuclear infrastructure of Iran, had to witness the obliteration of the letters of his name from the Kennedy Center.
As I pointed out in my June 27, 2025 post for Substack, “No Kings, No Tyrants,” the word, “obliterate,” derives from Latin; and at its root, the word literally means to erase letters.
While the solipsist in chief, the least lettered of wannabe tyrants, was unlikely to learn much about etymology, or irony, from a federal judge or anyone else, Trump does understand when he loses a battle in the courts or elsewhere.
And he lost.
He’s been losing a lot lately.
Another federal judge recently ruled that historical signage about, among other issues, slavery, LGBTQ rights and indigenous tribes, signs that Trump’s administration had eliminated from or altered at our national parks, must be restored.
Yes, that was another victory not only for those of us who believe in literacy; it was also a victory for freedom of speech and for our democracy overall.
It is dictators like Putin, Hitler and Stalin, who try to erase history.
Democracies must fight to preserve it, and that includes signage at parks.
Of course, we always need to shine a light on the truth.
It goes without saying that the truth matters.
It always has, and it always will.
Journalists and writers are not the only ones who have a stake in this “battle for the soul of our nation,” as Joe Biden aptly characterized it.
We all have a stake in this battle.
But journalists and writers have a significant role to play in helping to expose and illuminate the truth.
Journalism is a public trust, a check and balance on our government, our corporations and other entities in our democracy.
When freedom of the press itself is threatened, we must call out this threat and fight it with vigor.
Exhibit A in our battle for freedom of the press concerns the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance, owned by Trump cronies, the Ellisons, and Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN, among other media and entertainment properties.
Now, we need a federal judge to stop this merger.
It has happened before.
A few years ago, a federal judge stopped Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in this country, from acquiring Simon & Schuster, another one of the largest publishers in the U.S.
The federal judge stopped that merger on anti-monopolistic grounds, ruling that it would hurt competition in the book publishing world and prevent authors and their agents from having a robust number of places to shop their works.
Many in the entertainment community have voiced similar concerns about a possible merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers.
I agree with the concerns of actors, directors, screenwriters, animators and others that they would have fewer opportunities to pitch their projects, were the merger to go through.
But there is a much graver issue here, and it is one that I broached in December of last year when I wrote a three-part series, in which I argued that Paramount Skydance had to be stopped from acquiring Warner Brothers Discovery, which again owns CNN, among other entities.
To be sure, Warner Brothers has gone through many corporate ownership changes over the past 40 years or so.
Some of us recall when Time Inc. merged with Warner before Time lost much of its value.
AOL later took over Warner Brothers, as did AT&T, and more recently Discovery.
I have little to say about those corporate changes, except that not one of them presented an existential threat to Warner Brothers or to its longtime assets, such as HBO, CNN and other properties.
Last December, Netflix had a deal to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, which had been approved by the boards of both Warner and Netflix.
That was before the solipsist in chief weighed in and said ominously that he would “be involved.”
The Ellisons, of course, buttered up Trump and outbid Netflix, which bowed out of the contest for Warner Brothers Discovery when the deal no longer made financial sense.
All of this occurred just a few months after the Ellisons had acquired Paramount, whose assets include CBS.
Once known as the Tiffany network, for its high editorial standards, CBS has seen its brand name erode since the Ellisons took over the company.
CBS fired Stephen Colbert and “60 Minutes” correspondents, such as Scott Pelley. Other journalists have left.
One thing that all of these individuals have in common, whether they are comedians, talk-show hosts, anchors or correspondents, is that they have tried to illuminate the truth over the decades, including the truth about the corruption of Trump and his regime.
Some of their stories have been reportedly killed by Bari Weiss, the CBS News editor in chief.
But the message to kill or censor stories is clearly coming from the Ellisons, who are still pandering to Trump.
For a while now, our twice-impeached chief executive has made it clear how he feels about CNN and some of its anchors.
He has been particularly cruel to CNN’s women anchors, such as Kaitlin Collins, whom he bashed at a recent press conference; he said that she had “hatred in her eyes.”
In “Standing Up For the First Amendment,” the second piece in my three-part Substack series on Warner Brothers last December, I alluded to an article in The Guardian, which reported that Trump wanted the Ellisons to fire Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, two other CNN anchors, who have done nothing wrong.
Like Kaitlin Collins, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar are hard-working journalists, who report the truth and hold those in power to account.
If the Ellisons do take over Warner Brothers Discovery, a merger that just received regulatory approval from Trump’s Justice Department a few days ago, our democracy will be at even greater risk than it already is.
Most U.S. presidents have welcomed a vibrant press and a free and spirited debate in this country, including John Kennedy, whose name remains in its proper place of honor on the performance arts center that Congress legally named after him.
Other presidents from both parties have also recognized the critical importance of freedom of the press.
I can recall George Herbert Walker Bush, a Republican, talking to Larry King about how he often turned on CNN to get his news.
Rob Bonta, attorney general of California, and other attorneys general in other states in our country need to go before a federal judge and sue on behalf of all Americans to stop the merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers.
Bonta and other attorneys general need to do so not only on anti-monopolistic grounds; Bonta and his colleagues must argue that Paramount’s proposed takeover of WB and CNN would present a national security threat to our country.
It has been reported that sovereign funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have ponied up a substantial percentage of the monies for Paramount in its bid to merge with Warner Brothers Discovery.
In addition to the threat to national security that this would pose to CNN, there is also the aforementioned and very real fear of Trump’s meddling with the editorial policy and the personnel decisions of the first 24-hour news network, one that has provided us with fair-minded coverage of world events for more than 40 years.
Of course, it has also long been clear to many of us that Trump is owned by Putin.
As I wrote in December of last year, if the Ellisons take over Warner Brothers Discovery, CNN will become Trump TV, which in turn will be Putin TV.
We must not allow this to happen.
In addition to state attorneys general, regulators in Britain and elsewhere in Europe should likewise block such a merger for so many reasons, not least of which is that we all need freedom of the press on this planet, wherever we live.
And CNN, as I say, has been a leader in advocating for such freedom throughout the world for almost a half-century.
Years ago, in early 1995, I worked as a marketing consultant for Hanna-Barbera, the cartoon studio, which at the time was part of Turner Broadcasting.
I wrote a detailed brand audit for the Jetsons, which Turner Broadcasting intended to re-launch decades after the show’s debut on TV.
My checks back then were signed by Ted Turner, founder of CNN and head of Turner Broadcasting.
The checks featured a background with a mixture of bright colors, akin to those of a rainbow, though a purple motif predominated, if memory serves.
Unlike the Jetsons, CNN does not need to be re-launched. No one has forgotten its identity.
CNN has a strong brand, one of resilience, truth and courage, not unlike Ted Turner, a visionary, who passed away last month.
We must fight to preserve CNN’s role as a guardian of the light and the truth.
And we will need a rainbow coalition, worthy of Ted Turner, to do so.
If I may return to the opening of this piece, let me repeat that we cannot allow Trump to obliterate CNN.
The spirit of those three letters and their legacy must not be erased or violated.
Our founding fathers knew how vital a free press would be to our democracy, which is why they enshrined the First Amendment in the Constitution.
We owe it to our founding fathers, as well as to Ted Turner, to fight for the independence of CNN.
The world is watching.