Trump Would Oppose AT&T-TW Combination

Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, who has been attacking the press during his campaign, said Saturday he would oppose a merger between media giants AT&T and Time Warner.

During a speech, Trump said the AT&T deal with Time Warner would create an entity that was too powerful and that his administration would look at breaking up deal.

Time Warner owns CNN, one of the media outlets that Trump has been critical of.

Trump was talking about what his administration would do in its first 100 days when he discussed media concentration.

"As an example of the power structure I'm fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," Trump said.

Speaking in Gettysburg, Pa., Trump also criticized the combination of Comcast and NBCUniversal."

Comcast’s “purchase of NBC concentrates far too much power in one massive entity that is trying to tell the voters what to think and what to do,“ he said. ”Deals like this destroy democracy. And we’ll look at breaking that deal up and other deals like that. This should never ever have been approved in the first place.”

Trump is unhappy with NBC because it owns Access Hollywood, which unearthed a 10-year-old talk of Trump talking about abusing women.

Trump said he’d look at breaking up Comcast and NBCUniversal. “ This should never, ever have been approved in the first place,” he said.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.