BOOK: Trump Threatened To Block AT&T Merger Unless They Sold CNN To Fox News Owner Rupert Murdoch

The Insider reports:

Former President Donald Trump and his aides repeatedly tried to persuade AT&T to sell CNN to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch while also threatening to block the company’s merger with Time Warner, CNN’s parent company, according to a new book. The revelation comes from Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s “The Divider.” The book said that Trump summoned Randall Stephenson, the chairman, and CEO of AT&T until 2020, to his office in Trump Tower shortly after winning the election in 2016.

During this meeting, the book said that Trump complained about CNN’s boss at the time, Jeff Zucker, claiming to have “got” him that role and calling him a “bad guy.” The book said that AT&T viewed the calls as “an implicit quid pro quo” in which Trump would not push the government to block the merger with Time Warner if AT&T divested CNN to the owner of a competitor that had covered him sympathetically

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Trump tried to get AT&T to sell CNN to Rupert Murdoch, book reveals https://t.co/Vyzoons7Vp

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) September 16, 2022