Skydance Throws Private Tribute Dinner In Washington D.C. To Get Trump Admin’s Favor For Its WarnerDiscovery Pursuit On Same Night Of Investor Vote – David Ellison Gives A Speech About The First Amendment’s Importance With Band Playing Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, & Beverly Hills Cop Theme Songs.
by lowell2017
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Full text:
“David Ellison, the billionaire media mogul, feted President Trump and top members of his administration at a private dinner in Washington on Thursday as his company, Paramount, seeks federal sign-off on a $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
The gathering, at the U.S. Institute of Peace, included top executives and journalists from CBS News, which Paramount owns. Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, joined Mr. Ellison at Mr. Trump’s table, and Norah O’Donnell, the former “Evening News” anchorwoman, also attended, according to two people briefed on details of the closed-door event.
Among the guests was Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general. Mr. Blanche oversees the Justice Department, whose antitrust division is set to review the Warner Bros. acquisition. The deal would place CNN and HBO, among other outlets, under Mr. Ellison’s control. Paramount’s chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim, also sat with Mr. Trump, the people said.
The president spoke for nearly an hour to the guests, a group that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, a deputy White House chief of staff.
Journalists who cover the White House regularly spend time with senior administration officials, and evening events are part and parcel of the reporting process. On Saturday, much of the Washington press corps is set to attend the black-tie dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, where Mr. Trump is scheduled to speak.
But it is rare for a national media organization to sponsor an event intended to fete the powerful politicians who are covered by its news division, and rarer still when it has a major transaction pending before the federal government. Invitations to the event, which were distributed by Paramount and listed Mr. Ellison as the host, described the evening as “honoring the Trump White House.”
Several CBS News journalists said they were taken aback by the existence of the dinner. They described consternation within the CBS newsroom over the event’s potential to create a perception of coziness between the news division and the Trump administration. The journalists requested anonymity to share sensitive, private discussions.
Mr. Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the software giant Oracle. Larry Ellison, who did not attend Thursday’s event, has appeared with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. David Ellison has sat with the president at Ultimate Fighting Championship matches and attended this year’s State of the Union address.
Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist who co-founded The Free Press, has been accused by critics of bending CBS’s news coverage in a more Trump-friendly direction. She says that her editorial decisions are her own, and that she acts independently of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Trump. Mr. Ellison has said he wants to avoid bias in news coverage.
CBS’s flagship news program, “60 Minutes,” has aired some tough pieces about the Trump administration in recent weeks, including a segment featuring Mr. Trump’s critics in the Roman Catholic Church that prompted a volcanic presidential response. Mr. Trump himself has delivered mixed reviews of CBS’s new iteration, sometimes applauding Mr. Ellison’s takeover of the network but also harshly criticizing “60 Minutes” reports that he considered unfair.
Paramount declined to comment. Representatives for the White House and CBS News did not respond to requests for comment.
Paramount beat out a rival bidder, Netflix, in February to secure the purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would reshape the American news and information landscape. Warner Bros. shareholders approved the sale this week, but it has to pass muster with regulators at the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump’s table included the first lady, Melania Trump, and Ms. Weiss’s wife, the journalist Nellie Bowles, according to the two people briefed on the event.
Other CBS journalists who attended were Tom Cibrowski, the CBS News president; Jan Crawford, the chief legal correspondent; Nancy Cordes, the chief White House correspondent; and Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Several dozen protesters gathered outside the Institute of Peace, which sits along the National Mall, on Thursday to assail Mr. Ellison and the pending Warner Bros. sale. Some chanted, “Block the merger.”
Mr. Miller and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, are expected to attend the Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday as guests of CBS News.”
More details from Puck:
“On Thursday evening, President Trump, Melania, Stephen Miller, acting attorney general Todd Blanche, and several other members of the White House cabinet attended a private dinner at the Institute of Peace hosted by Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison—who, as you know, is awaiting regulatory approval for his $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Per the invitation, the dinner was held to honor both the president and CBS News correspondents, though there were only four correspondents in the room. Bari Weiss and Tom Cibrowski, the CBS News president, were there, as were Norah O’Donnell, Jan Crawford, and White House correspondents Weijia Jiang and Nancy Cordes. Weijia, who is currently serving as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, was toasted by Bari, Tom, and several of her colleagues over lunch on Friday at Blue Duck Tavern, but that, of course, was not the true purpose of Thursday’s dinner.
Trump and David were quite convivial during the dinner, I’m told. David gave a speech about the importance of the First Amendment, then Trump gave a lengthy speech that included friendly remarks for David and light teasing of Bari and CBS News, alongside some critiques of other news outlets. (Trump reportedly had the mic for almost an hour, portending a long night for everyone in the room at the Hilton on Saturday.)
Bari and her wife, Nellie Bowles (couldn’t help myself, Nellie), sat at Trump’s table, as did Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim. Beyond that, the evening was said to be both pleasant and unremarkable. A band played theme songs from Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and Beverly Hills Cop. Guests enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, followed by salad and surf and turf.
As I’ve noted, David’s decision to host the president has rekindled the latent angst and anxiety that many press veterans feel about his takeover of CBS News, as well as his impending takeover of CNN. By now, David has more than demonstrated that he really doesn’t care about the optics—inviting Trump to a UFC cage match, attending the State of the Union address with Lindsey Graham, etcetera. He seems to understand as well as anyone that, in Trump’s America, servility is the most powerful currency—and without it he risks squandering the deal.
In retrospect, though, a private dinner was probably the most effective way to pay homage to the president away from the prying eyes of the media. As you know, CBS News will also host Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller at its tables on Saturday night—albeit not at Bari’s table. But David is almost certainly not going to be in attendance then. Odds are he is savvy enough to skip the banquet and the prying eyes of C-SPAN’s cameras, lest they capture him choking on his Chateaubriand if and when Trump decides to praise his takeover of two of America’s most storied news institutions in front of a room full of journalists who still have major misgivings about even hosting the president.”
https://puck.news/newsletter_content/baris-pre-whcd-hangover-glenn-becks-slow-motion-outro/
State AG’s are our only hope
barf
Paramount will have no actors if they all boycott. Do it fucking actors who signed that petition. You hold all the power
Laying it on thick there
Terminator Genisys 4K Blu-ray comes with the 2 hour 20 minute “making of” documentary called *Reset the Future: Constructing Terminator Genisys*.
It is hosted by David Ellison and throughout that doc he explains every hiring and creative decision of that atrocious film. He was really proud of it.
Fucking gross.