Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Campbell, it was reported that Mr. Sarandos met with President Trump on November 24th and discussed Netflix's bid to buy Warner Brothers at length. When Discovery acquired the Warner Media assets from AT&T in 2022, did you or Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav meet with President Biden to discuss that transaction?
I'm not aware that there was any such meeting. No.
Have you or David Zaslav met with President Trump to discuss this transaction?
Do you think there's anything inappropriate about meeting with the president of the United States to discuss a transaction?
I think in situations like this, all the parties involved often reach out to anyone in government that has an interest in the transaction. So I don't think it's unusual.
What about Skydance? They were able to close a deal with Paramount last year right around concurrent with the time that they paid President Trump $16 million to address the president's grievances about a 2024 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Does that strike you as appearing improper?
That was obviously not a decision we were involved with.
I'm asking you just under oath. What do you think?
I believe that antitrust laws should be applied objectively, that they should follow the facts. But we're in an unprecedented, or you might call it, as you use your word, unusual environment right now where we see private organizations from universities, law firms, we're seeing corporations begin to come and make deals with the president of the United States. Whether it's contributions to his ballrooms, whether it's giving him information that he is in this deal, then goes out and buys stock in those corporations. We're seeing people offer pro bono services. All of it seems to be currying favor with the president of the United States who is exercising, as using your words, unusual sway over these deals. That strikes you as a concern, correct?
We are staying focused on the regulatory process.
I understand you're staying focused on that, sir, but so many people are staying focused on their narrow concerns and they're missing the larger erosion of our democracy. Antitrust, as presidents have said in the past, is an erosion of our democracy, of the free markets, of the ideals and the principles that are very much at the center of this hearing. We are, in my opinion, in a constitutional crisis right now when you have a president who is pocketing literally hundreds of millions of dollars from the very people that he is able to make decisions about the destinies of their companies.
Mr. Sarandos, it was reported that you met with the president, President Trump, for more than an hour on November 24th, which was less than two weeks before Netflix announced that it won the bidding war to acquire Warner Brothers, within days that the president of the United States bought a significant amount of your stock. The reporting indicates that much of the conversation covered Netflix's bid to buy Warner Brothers and that you left the meeting with the impression that President Trump wasn't opposed to the deal. What did the president have to say in that meeting about the proposed transaction?
Senator Booker, I can't speak to the reporting because I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I will tell you that I have met with the president a few times. We have talked about the state of the entertainment industry in general, production economy, runaway production, the value of incentives, the cost of tariffs, all the different ways that we can protect and create American jobs. I think it's wholly proper for the president of the United States to talk to leaders of industry about the industries that they're running.
The deal was not discussed. The merger deal was not discussed at all in the meeting?
Of course, he asked for what was going on. How was the deal going? I gave him some general information, general overview of what we were doing. And that was it. It was a very small part of the entire meeting. It was not a meeting specifically to talk about the deal.
Did you feel that President Trump wasn't opposed to the deal?
I got a feeling the president was very interested in protecting American jobs and American labor and American industry, and that's what we were talking about.
You think his intentions in the case of this deal are just noble and objective?
