Two signs of the regulatory apocalypse

THE CONFLUENCE OF two seemingly unrelated news events in recent days the first one roiling Hollywood and media from coast to coast, the other playing out before the Supreme Court-was nothing short of uncanny.

- JACKIE CALMES

MARIO TAMA Getty Images

NETFLIX and Paramount are wooing President Trump in pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

And disturbing.

The first news was the one-two punch of Friday's bombshell that Netflix planned to swallow up Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming business to create an entertainment industry behemoth, and then Monday's competing hostile bid from jilted suitor Paramount Skydance for all of Warner. And in between, on Sunday, President Trump-tuxedoed and speaking on a red carpet, appropriately enough-proclaimed matter-of-factly "I'll be involved" in deciding the winner. (Just as he'd decided who won that night's annual Kennedy Center Honors, after firing the center's bipartisan board and making himself chairman and host.)

As if anyone doubted that Trump would be the de facto decider here. Certainly Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos and Paramount CEO David Ellison didn't doubt. The warring rivals each have been courting Trump's favor, just as he likes and as other corporate chieftains have learned to do in the suck-up, pay-to-play world Trump has built from his gilded White House. Ellison even sat in the Kennedy Center's presidential box with Trump, hours before announcing Paramount's flex (with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as an investor), and Trump confirmed from the red carpet that he and Sarandos recently met in the White House as Sarandos weighed Netflix's surprise bid.