Donald Trump purchased corporate bonds from Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix just days after the two media giants agreed to a massive $83 billion blockbuster deal that would see the streaming company purchase most of WBD’s assets.
According to a financial disclosure released late Thursday by the White House, the president acquired the debt securities issued by the two companies – valued as high as $1 million each – last month.
The disclosure form revealed that Trump purchased two sets of Netflix bonds, each valued between $250,001-$500,000, with the first acquisition taking place on December 12 and the second one closing on December 16. He did the same with Warner Bros, Discovery, purchasing two tranches of bonds at the same value on December 12 and December 16.
Besides the purchases of the Netflix and WBD debt securities, the financial disclosure form listed nearly 200 transactions totaling well over $100 million in corporate and municipal bonds acquired in November and December. Other companies the president purchased bonds from are SiriusXM, Boeing, Macy's and General Motors.
While a White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, an official told Bloomberg that the purchase decisions were made by independent financial advisors and not the Trump family. The White House said the same thing when a similar disclosure was released in August.
The mega-merger between WBD and Netflix – which would see the streaming pioneer acquire the Warner studio, HBO and HBO Max – was announced on December 5. The deal would also feature Warner Bros. spinning off the majority of its cable assets – including CNN, TNT and TBS – into a separate company.
At the same time, Paramount – led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and close Trump ally Larry Ellison – has launched a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and submitted a counteroffer that has been rejected by the WBD board.
Paramount, which seeks to purchase all of Warner’s assets, filed a lawsuit this week demanding more information from WBD, particularly on the question of how much the studio valued CNN and the other cable channels that are being spun off into Discovery Global.
David Ellison, who reportedly promised Trump “sweeping changes” at CNN if he were to purchase Warner Bros., has insisted that the cable assets have almost no value and therefore the WBD shareholders should reject Netflix’s bid due to the difference in share prices. Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly praised Ellison as a “great” and “amazing” person while cheering on the conservative shift at CBS News, which is owned by Paramount.
The president, who has said he will be heavily involved in the regulatory approval of the WBD purchase, has also lauded Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos as a “fantastic man” while meeting with the media executive in recent weeks.
Still, this hasn’t stopped Trump from sharing on Truth Social a month-old article from far-right outlet One America News criticizing the Netflix-Warner merger, which griped that the streaming giant is a “woke media monopoly” while urging for the cancellation of Netflix’s “cultural takeover.” According to Deadline, “it may have made David Ellison‘s day.”
When asked about the president’s Truth Social post in an interview with the New York Times, Sarandos said “I don’t know why he would have done that.” He added that “no conversation we ever had was about any of the things that were in that article that he posted,” but that he didn’t “want to overread it, either.”
