Comcast – which has drawn scrutiny from the Trump administration over its reported interest in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery – has made a multimillion-dollar donation to fund President Trump’s White House makeover, On The Money has learned.
While the exact size of the donation couldn’t be confirmed, one source with knowledge of the matter pegged it at an eye-popping sum: somewhere between $5 million and $10 million to fund the president’s so-called “state ballroom project.”
A Comcast spokesman declined to comment. A White House spokeswoman had no comment.
Controversy over the White House revamp has swelled since the entire East Wing is now under construction to create what many believe is an unnecessary level of opulence, including a 90,000 square foot ballroom.
Comcast meanwhile, has good reason to cozy up to Trump: Its interest in acquiring all or parts of Warner Bros. Discovery is facing, as The Post first reported, significant opposition from Trump’s regulatory apparatus.
In addition to antitrust concerns, sources say Comcast faces the president’s own animus against the company stemming from its ownership of the MAGA-hating MSNBC cable network, as well as the left-leaning NBC television network.
“The odds that (Comcast CEO) Brian Roberts is going to be able to expand and buy CNN or whatever is low,” a government official with direct knowledge of the situation told The Post. “Maybe Brain Roberts comes up with a grand detente with the president but I don’t think that will happen and that’s the key.”
WBD CEO David Zaslav, meanwhile, believes he can make a case to the Trump administration that they should allow deals outside of Paramount Skydance — including Netflix, Amazon and Comcast — by appealing to free market types in the administration.
Comcast is likewise expected to argue that it should be allowed to bid and possibly buy WBD because it has announced that it is spinning out its lefty cable network MSNBC into a separate unit, sources said.
And of course, it paid big bucks to make the Trump White House look nice.
As The Post has reported, the White House has a clear favorite in the bidding war and that would be Paramount Skydance; David Ellison is the son of mega-billionaire and Trump pal, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
Trump administration officials point to Ellison’s past experience dealing with the president as key in the WBD takeover drama. Before Ellison set his sights on WBD, he completed an $8 billion deal to purchase Paramount with the administration’s blessing.
Warner Bros Discovery, known as WBD, owns both the No. 1 ranked studio, the No. 3 ranked streaming services, as well as cable channels like HBO and CNN.
As The Post first reported, Zaslav earlier Thursday kicked off the bidding process for the company, known as WBD, in a deal that could cost as much as $80 billion. The Post was first to report that Zaslav rebuffed three bids from Paramount Skydance CEO David Elllison, the last one at $23.50 a share, from the independent movie producer now running Paramount Skydance.
He expects another bid from Ellison, this one a public so-called hostile offer, to force his hand by appealing to shareholders to allow the company to be sold to Paramount Skydance.