Earlier this week, the United States Department of Justice moved to sue in order to prevent telecommunications conglomerate AT&T from acquiring entertainment company Time Warner for $85 billion.
The DOJ has provided the rationale that if the merger were to go through, overall innovation within the media industry would suffer, and consumers would likely be subject to higher subscription costs. Within its complaints, it stated “If allowed to proceed, this merger will harm consumers by substantially lessening competition among traditional video distributors and slowing emerging online competition.”
Donald Trump was not shy on the topic, stating in Florida on Tuesday that the merger would be “not good for the country.”
A merger would give AT&T access and ownership to all of Time Warner’s subsidiaries including HBO and CNN, the latter of which President Trump has criticized on numerous occasions due to reporting on what he erroneously called “fake news.”
Since the suit was filed, AT&T has stated that such a move by the DOJ is “inexplicable,” and has questioned the reasoning and implicitly suggested possible ulterior motives in regard to the Trump Administration’s stance on CNN and big conglomerates in general.
In an attempt to point out the supposed hypocrisy of the suit, comparisons have been made to the DOJ-approved 2011 deal in which Comcast acquired NBC Universal.
Trump has denied any political ties to the DOJ’s decision despite his public opinion.
