đș The MAGA Mogulsâ Media Takeover
The pro-Trump Ellison family launches a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, Jasmine Crockett sends Texas Dems into a tailspin, and did 'Alligator Alcatraz' use CIA torture methods on migrants!?
On this day in 1966, outgoing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin was born. Apparently, the sweater vest aficionado is actively being considered as a replacement for one of Donald Trumpâs most controversial cabinet secretaries⊠đ Stay tuned for more!
Good morning! Peter here. Later today, at 12pm ET, Home of the Brave contributor and former police officer Michael Fanone, who was injured on Jan. 6, 2021, will join me live on Substack to discuss several of the stories covered in todayâs âFirst Draft.â Let me know in the comments which news items Michael and I should hone in on!
In todayâs âFirst Draft,â Donald Trumpâs billionaire buddies seek to control even more of Americaâs corporate media, young voters sour on the GOP, and the Supreme Court appears poised to expand presidential powers yet again.
Trumpâs Billionaires Brawl for American Eyeballs
âThe corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world,â the legendary Gore Vidal proclaimed in his 1992 book of essays, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. âNo First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent.â
What would Vidal say if he lived to see the state of the media today, some three decades later?
One canât imagine his assessment would be anything but bleak.
First, consider the Murdoch family and its sprawling properties: through News Corp and legacy entities like 21st Century Fox, the oligarchs own and control the broadcast scourge that is Fox âNews,â the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a vast apparatus of foreign print outlets.
Then, there is Apartheid Clyde himself, âFirst Buddyâ Elon Musk. As the grand dragon, err⊠sorry, grand poobah of the âNazi porn barâ that is Twitter (no one calls it âXâ), Musk arguably controls the most influential social media platform in the world. With hundreds of millions of active monthly users, itâs the digital town square! Yes, Bluesky is wonderful and all, but thatâs not where the overwhelming majority of DC bigwigs are consuming their political discourse.
Last, but certainly not least, come MAGAâs newest oligarchs on the scene: father and son duo Larry and David Ellison. Currently, with their new posts atop Paramount Skydance, the pair controls Showtime, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and most critically CBS News, where they installed Bari Weiss to turn the Tiffany Network into all but a Fox doppelgĂ€nger. Whatâs more, they will soon also have sway over the screen in your pocket. In September, President Donald Trump greenlit a plan for Oracle, the tech company Papa Ellison co-founded and still controls, to join the investor consortium that will operate the American version of TikTok, which touts a whopping 170 million users in the US.
Those arenât enough eyeballs for the Ellisons, however. They want far, far more. For some time, the men have been seeking to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in order to snatch up HBO, Cinemax, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and, yes, CNN.
These billionaires are intent on controlling reality itself, and the scheme they have in store is so much more sinister than anything you could imagine.