President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Yeah. This is what paying $500 for a hammer and $3,000 for toilet seats go to.

 

Actually, I think he asked not whether there had been a response in general but whether any Democrats had called for Conyers' resignation. And there ain't gonna be a demand for resignation.

 

DOJ didn't block the Comcast-NBC acquisition, but it did require a consent decree--and there is evidence that it's still failed to prevent anti-competitive behavior. This deal is even more problematic because AT&T owns Direct TV, and therefore competes with cable providers nationwide. Not even close to a fan of Trump, but this isn't necessarily unreasonable.

And the nonsense about telling them they had to sell CNN seems to have clearly been planted by AT&T flacks to take advantage of the media's anti-Trump bias. The NYT and WSJ both reported the more nuanced story that DOJ instead requested that they either sell all of Turner Broadcasting or DirectTV.

 

Absolutely agree (though I'm not co-signing on the "all anti-trust action is populist crap..." part). Here's the DOJ's stated explanation for opposing the merger:

"A Justice Department official told reporters on Monday that the merger would raise prices for consumers and potentially block creators of media content from distributing their product without paying more money."

The bolded part in particular is laughable on its face given that the same administration, via the FCC, is moving to eliminate net neutrality rules. That they're even pretending to care about this as part of the rationale to oppose the merger is insulting. But hey, CNN is mean to the President, so let's use the nation's law enforcement arm to punish the parent company as a warning to corporately owned news organizations (pretty much all of them) that dare to criticize this administration. Yay democracy!

 

According to the last 20-plus years of antitrust law, the government has no case. This would require a complete about-face by the judiciary.

 

And, of course, he lied about Truman. He really can't help himself.

 

Without getting fired.

 

What would be the justification for forcing them to sell off Turner (CNN's parent) rather than any of Time Warner's other programming assets? That seems like a fig leaf so it wouldn't look like CNN was the target. And AT&T already competed with cable providers before buying DirecTV, since it had its own TV service, U-Verse. Why should AT&T have to sell DirecTV, especially when rivals (such as Comcast, which as you say owns NBCUniversal) already have extensive holdings on both the distribution and content sides?

Not trying to fight; I genuinely don't understand the points you are trying to make.

 

If only life were as simple as an Ayn Rand novel. Did you even bother reading the complaint? I'm not saying the government is necessarily right, but at least I've made some effort to actually understand its argument, and it doesn't seem to me clearly unreasonable--the deal threatens to harm consumer choices if AT&T threatens to withhold certain properties that it holds the right to (e.g., certain sporting events) to harm its rivals in the content transmission business. I'm not an economist, and neither are you, so I don't think either of us are really in a great position to evaluate the validity of these claims, on either side.

 

If only there were a former antitrust lawyer in the house ...

(Unfortunately, he is working on a summary judgment brief today which is taking up all his time and brain power.)

 

1) DirectTV competes literally everywhere, so it basically will be a rival in the video transmission market to anyone it negotiates to sell its content to. Comcast had at least a somewhat more limited footprint--and in any event was required to enter a consent decree because of this very issue. And there's evidence it's not keeping its promises: Comcast’s Track Record in Past Deals May Be Hitch for Merger With Time Warner Cable

2) Turner Broadcasting owns most of the cable assets, except for HBO, I think--so I don't know there really are a bunch of other programming assets. It also, according to the DOJ complaint, holds the rights to various sporting events (which are particularly valuable) and seem to be one the DOJ's concerns.