Larry and David Ellison Are Building a Pro-Trump Media Behemoth

In the United States, the Ellisons are trying to play a similar role, gobbling up as many outlets as they can to build a mass media and entertainment empire that will keep growing larger—as long as Ellison keeps placating the president. At CBS News, they have already begun to do that, purchasing the anti-woke outlet The Free Press and installing its founder, Bari Weiss, as the network’s editor in chief, despite her lack of any meaningful reporting or newsroom experience. Weiss has already begun making changes, pushing the network in a pro-Trump, pro-Israel direction—one that could be expected at CNN if the Ellisons take control of it.

Given that the political right has warmed to antitrust policy of late, mainly with respect to Silicon Valley, this could be considered a shocking development. But the right’s dalliance with antitrust has always been about power and control: pressuring companies to align with its political goals and punishing those who don’t. In a perceptive review of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s The Tyranny of Big Tech, whose argument is founded in part on the belief that social media giants’ content moderation policies restrict free speech, Josh Harris wrote, “One cannot be in favor of unfettered capitalism and simultaneously hold that the government should restrict the speech and activities of those corporations when that speech is out of step with the right-wing positioning in the culture wars.” The Trump administration is trying to resolve this contradiction by basically saying that it is in favor of unfettered capitalism as long as the people doing it are in line with its priorities.

Larry and David Ellison grasped that sooner than most, and they’re making a killing as a result. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” Trump said earlier this month, praising their acquisition of Paramount. He said CBS News had “great potential” after Weiss was put in charge, and that he expects the outlet to be “fairer.”