After repeatedly attacking CNN’s news coverage as “fake,” “garbage” and “terrible” and personally pledging to block a proposed merger of its parent company, Time Warner, with AT&T, the Trump administration opposed the deal, a vertical merger that would not normally attract antitrust scrutiny. The government denied that retaliation was at work and the court did not assess that claim. But the judge rejected the government’s challenge and approved the merger with no conditions imposed, citing the government’s failure to adduce “economic evidence of any kind” and reliance on “bare conjecture” as the basis for its case.
Trump has also repeatedly attacked the Washington Post and threatened to target its owner Jeff Bezos’s biggest holding, Amazon. This spring the president followed through on his threats, ordering the Postal Service to review rates for the online shopping behemoth. Coming in the wake of the president’s eruptions directed at the Post, that order too appears to be punitive.