🤔 You can accuse the Donald of a whole lot of things, but you can’t accuse him of not taking care of his cronies.
Like, wow.
Larry Ellison, one of the Donald’s most devoted suck-ups and biggest donors, just landed another eye-popping payback deal.
(Missed the Instagram video on this? Click here to check it out)
On July 23, the Department of War awarded Oracle a software contract worth up to $6.99 billion over ten years, consolidating the military’s on-premises licensing into one deal.
It was structured as a single-vendor agreement, not put out for open competition.
Convenient timing:
Oracle stock has been cratering all year, down 38% since January on fears that AI is going to gut the legacy software business, and this contract sent shares popping.
A nice life raft, thrown by friend Donald, straight to Larry.
Last summer, the FCC approved the Ellison family’s $8 billion Skydance takeover of Paramount, the parent company of CBS.
But not before Paramount coughed up $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit claiming 60 Minutes “deceptively edited” its Kamala Harris interview, a suit First Amendment lawyers openly called frivolous.
As part of the deal, Skydance also promised to kill Paramount’s DEI programs, install a news “ombudsman” to field bias complaints, and, Trump claimed, kick in another $20 million in public service programming aligned with his politics.
The FCC chairman, a Trump appointee, insists there was no connection between the lawsuit payout and the merger approval.
Democratic senators weren’t buying it, calling it a textbook quid pro quo.
This past February, Ellison-backed Paramount Skydance beat out Netflix with a staggering $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO, CNN, the whole library.
The Justice Department cleared it in June, while Congress mostly shrugged.
But a dozen Democratic state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, sued to block it on antitrust grounds, and a federal judge in Oakland agreed the deal likely breaks the law, ordering it paused.
Facing that, Paramount just agreed to freeze the whole $111 billion megamerger until an antitrust trial happens, or until June 2027 at the latest.
So, waved through by Trump’s DOJ, stopped cold by the courts.
Make of that what you will.
A no-bid Pentagon contract worth billions, a media empire bought partly with a $16 million check to the president himself, and a second media empire waved through by his DOJ (before state courts stepped in), all inside about twelve months, all flowing to a family that’s poured tens of millions into Trump’s campaigns and Super PACs.
Why, you are, big spender.🤑🤯
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