Would Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump agree? Should libertarians be worried? Probably. Well, that's where we're at with this big Netflix deal. We're going to talk about that today. Welcome to the Reason Roundtable. This is your Libertarian review of news and Culture from the editors of Reason magazine and friends.

I'm your host, Peter Souterman, and today I am joined by my colleagues, Catherine Mangue Ward, Matt Welch, and very special guest, Liz Wolfe.

All right, so the biggest possible news in media, Netflix now owns Batman, or they're about to after this deal goes through regulatory

approval. Also, Harry Potter, Looney Tunes, all this stuff, right? So last week, Netflix

announced this gigantic deal to acquire Warner Brothers. It's worth $83 billion, give or take,

depending on how you calculate. Netflix is going to acquire Warner Brothers's entire IP library.

Like I said, this includes Batman, Superman, all of DC Comics, Harry Potter, Looney Tunes, all of this stuff,

right?

This huge back catalog of great Hollywood films, as well as HBO and its streaming service,

HBO Max, plus ownership of video game studios, stakes in various theme park deals.

I mean, this is just a gigantic media merger.

CNN, however, which had been sort of part of the kind of political conversation about this deal,

is not part of this merger.

But it's a huge deal for CNN anyway, because it's going to be spun off into a completely different company.

So there's going to be an ownership change there, too. But all of this still has to go through government regulators. And it

has already raised concerns about antitrust with Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts,

calling it an anti-monopoly nightmare. President Donald Trump says he doesn't know about the deal. He's not quite

dead set against it, but he will be involved in deciding whether or not it goes through. And

apparently Netflix chief Ted Sarandos already had a meeting with him before this deal was

announced, trying to grease the wheels, trying to pave the way for Donald Trump to say,

okay to Netflix owning all of this.

So, Catherine, you recently wrote about how reason opposes socialists from all parties.

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