The far-left cable network that spent years treating President Trump like a criminal defendant just woke up under new corporate ownership.
Paramount on Tuesday completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, creating a combined company that will operate simply as Skydance, according to the New York Post.
The combined enterprise, now standing as a corporate giant valued at nearly $111 billion, including debt, officially brings CNN, CBS, HBO, Warner Bros., and HGTV under one single corporate umbrella. And the left-wing fake news industrial complex is completely losing its mind.
David Ellison, the Skydance founder who already bought Paramount, is chairman and CEO. Ynon Kreiz, the former Mattel chief, is co-CEO.
The Ellison family, led by billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, a prominent conservative donor and stalwart supporter of President Donald J. Trump, holds full voting power alongside RedBird Capital.
The Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners together are the sole holders of the Class A common stock, including 100% of the combined company’s voting shares, the company said in its closing announcement.
David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Skydance, said:
“Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry. From the start, our ambition was to bring these two storied studios together and create a stronger competitor, with the talent, resources, and reach to tell great stories in every genre, on every platform, for audiences everywhere. Now that ambition is a reality.
“We’re grateful to everyone who made this possible – the employees, creative talent, and production teams of both companies, who worked tirelessly to get us here and inspire audiences around the world every day, as well as the advisors and partners who guided this transaction to completion. Our focus now turns to the future: building a company that empowers creatives, entertains audiences and rewards shareholders. We couldn’t be more excited to get to work.”
For decades, real Americans have watched as corrupt corporate networks smeared patriots, pushed radical narratives, and served as the propaganda arm of the ruling class.
As The Gateway Pundit has repeatedly documented in previous reporting, the mainstream fake news media simply cannot stop lying to the public.
Now, for the first time in modern political history, the absolute heart of the far-left propaganda machine, CNN, is under the ownership and voting control of individuals aligned with the conservative movement!
In February, Paramount won the bidding war after Netflix walked away from its studio-and-streaming bid, as The Gateway Pundit reported.
President Trump’s Department of Justice later cleared the full-company deal, finding it was not likely to harm competition. That was not good enough for the blue-state lawfare machine.
In July, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of Democrat attorneys general sued to kill it, and Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a temporary restraining order, as The Gateway Pundit reported.
Paramount blasted the challenge as one of the weakest merger cases in modern antitrust history. Advisers even floated moving tens of billions in planned spending out of California.
The states eventually settled. The price of peace includes an editorial-independence board over CNN and CBS News, continued operation of the studio lots, and other conditions.
Mark Thompson stays on as CNN’s chief. Bari Weiss is set to lead CBS News. So nobody should pretend the 9 a.m. CNN chyron just flipped to a Trump rally. The settlement was written to stop exactly that.
Still, the mood inside the building already told the story. Last month, insiders told Variety the mood at CNN was “like a funeral” as the Paramount close approached, as The Gateway Pundit reported. Staffers were not mourning journalism. They were mourning the possibility that resistance TV might have to answer to owners who are not on the same group chat as the DNC.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it more bluntly back in March, during CNN’s coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran: “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” the Boston Globe noted in its close story.
The Ellison family’s connections to Republican politics stretch back years, particularly through Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who has become one of the technology industry’s largest GOP donors.
Ellison initially backed Marco Rubio during the 2016 Republican presidential primary before moving closer to Donald Trump after Trump secured the nomination.
In February 2020, Ellison hosted President Trump for a major reelection fundraiser at his private estate in Rancho Mirage, California. Trump’s official schedule listed the fundraiser at Ellison’s home.
Ellison subsequently poured enormous sums into Republican candidates and organizations. In 2021, he contributed $5 million to the Opportunity Matters Fund, a super PAC supporting Republican Sen. Tim Scott.
He followed that with another $15 million in January 2022, bringing his contributions to the group to $20 million at the time.
Forbes also reported that Ellison had previously given $1 million to a super PAC supporting Republican Sen. Susan Collins and $250,000 to a group supporting Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Ellison’s financial support for Trump became even more significant during the 2024 election.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2026 that Ellison gave roughly $45 million to a political nonprofit supporting Trump’s 2024 election effort.
The Journal further reported that Ellison gave millions more to Trump-supporting organizations after the election. Because much of that money flowed through nonprofit organizations that are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as federal political committees, those contributions do not necessarily appear in traditional FEC campaign-finance records.
However, Larry’s son, David Ellison, founder of Skydance Media, donated $929,600 to the Biden Victory Fund in February 2024, according to federal campaign-finance reporting. The Washington Post identified David Ellison as one of Biden’s notable large donors during the first quarter of 2024.
But after the intense political opposition, regulatory obstacles, and legal challenges surrounding the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, it remains to be seen how friendly David Ellison and their new media empire will be toward the Democrat establishment that fought the deal.
RedBird Capital Partners, meanwhile, was founded by former Goldman Sachs executive Gerry Cardinale and has grown into a private investment firm managing more than $15 billion across sports, media, entertainment and financial services.
Cardinale has also developed a direct relationship with the Trump administration. According to RedBird, President Trump appointed Cardinale to the White House Committee on Reforming College Athletics in 2026.
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