Washington, DC –President Donald Trump declared Sunday that Netflix’s $72 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery “could be a problem” because of market-share concerns, promising he will be “involved in the decision.”
The surprise announcement, delivered at the Kennedy Center while apparently between arias, instantly turned a blockbuster corporate merger into the season’s hottest political drama.
Stock traders reacted with the grace of someone who just discovered their couch is on fire. At least three major brokerages slashed their Netflix price targets faster than you can say “are you still watching?”, dragging the consensus median down to $139. Somewhere, a day-trader’s emotional-support parrot is still screaming “sell.”
Consumers, meanwhile, are quietly wondering if the end result will be paying $87 a month to watch Friends in 4K while being advertised to by Batman.
Netflix, already the undisputed heavyweight champion of making you feel unproductive on Sunday nights, now wants to swallow HBO Max, the Batman factory, and the entire Warner Bros studio lot. The combination would create a streaming colossus so large it might need its own zip code.
Enter President Trump, who rarely misses an opportunity to insert himself into any storyline bigger than his own. Speaking from the Kennedy Center, he warned the merged entity’s market share “could be a problem,” which in regulatory terms is roughly equivalent to your doctor saying “hmm, that’s interesting” right before ordering every test known to medicine.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett confirmed Monday that the Justice Department plans to study the deal for “quite a while,” which is Washington-speak for “we’ll get back to you sometime after the next election, maybe.”
Netflix, displaying the serene confidence of a cat that has never met a laser pointer it couldn’t catch, agreed to a $5.8 billion breakup fee if regulators say no. That’s enough money to buy roughly 29 million new subscribers or one decent weekend of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets.
To calm the antitrust watchdogs, Netflix is expected to argue that its real competition isn’t Disney+ or Amazon Prime—it’s a 15-second video of a raccoon falling off a trampoline on TikTok. Good luck getting the Justice Department to accept “Your Honor, the market is defined by dancing teenagers” as a legal argument.
Hollywood unions, never known for understated reactions, immediately warned of mass job losses, fewer movies, and higher prices. One guild representative was overheard muttering that the merger would personally cancel Christmas.
Rival bidder Paramount Skydance, still smarting from being rejected like a prom date, grumbled that the whole process smelled biased—especially galling since Skydance has, shall we say, friendlier connections in certain Mar-a-Lago circles.
Analysts now predict the deal could languish in regulatory purgatory for years. Rosenblatt’s Barton Crockett summed it up neatly: the merger has all the momentum of a sloth on sedatives.
In the meantime, Netflix shareholders are learning that nothing spices up a Tuesday quite like the President of the United States casually threatening your biggest acquisition on national television.
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