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‘Craven’: CNN Parent CEO Slammed for Saying ‘Deregulation’ Is His Criteria for President
At the annual “summer camp for billionaires,” hosted by a Fifth Avenue boutique investment bank, “the world’s ultra-wealthy” – top executives in media, tech, and finance – this week are hanging out at a “retreat in the idyllic Idaho wilderness.”
Officially known as the Sun Valley Conference, Business Insider reports, “the conference has been held since the 1980s and provides CEOs and business leaders a chance to connect over outdoor activities and presentations on national security and geopolitics.”
“Sometimes, these leaders connect and create billion-dollar deals — like Disney’s acquisition of ABC or Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post.”
Bloomberg reports “Paramount Global’s agreement to merge with David Ellison’s Skydance Media was the talk of the resort.”
“Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav said the deal, which will see the parent of Paramount Pictures and CBS change hands after decades of control by the Redstone family, will lead to a healthier industry. Ellison, the son of Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison, and RedBird Capital Partners are investing more than $8 billion to take over the company.”
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As head of the newly-formed mega multi-national conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, Zaslav is effectively the chief of CNN, along with well over a dozen cable TV channels and streaming services. In total, 66 “brands” worldwide.
On its corporate website, Warner Bros. Discovery promotes DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance investing.) It includes among its values: “Intentionally seek out diversity, remove barriers, and create space for all to share ideas and be heard.”
On Tuesday, Zaslav was asked about the 2024 presidential election.
“Zaslav said it mattered less to him [which] party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business,” Bloomberg reports.
“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better,” he said.
Critics quickly responded.
“Why are some CEOs warming up to Trump?” U.C. Berkeley professor and former Clinton Cabinet Secretary Robert Reich wrote. “Yes, the tax cuts — but it’s not just that. The Biden-Harris admin is reviving anti-trust in a big way, with lawsuits against Amazon, Apple, Ticketmaster, and many more. Corporate execs are terrified of their monopolies being broken up.”
“A lot of rich Americans think they’d make more money under a dictatorship. The rest of us need to defeat them in November,” commented media critic Mark Jacob, a former Chicago Tribune editor.
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Justin Kanew, former Democratic congressional candidate and founder of The Tennessee Holler remarked, “All our problems summed up in one greedy little quote.”
“Here it is. As succinctly stated as it possibly can be,” declared political commentator Jared Yates Sexton. “The wealth class cares about one thing and one thing alone: eliminating the ability for the masses through representative government to impede their consolidation of power and wealth.”
Film executive and founder of The Black List, Franklin Leonard observed, “They are who we thought they were.”
Former CIA Clandestine Service member John Sipher wrote: “Craven irresponsibly as a citizen.”
Former DOJ attorney Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress remarked, “Business leaders fail to understand that an unpredictable democracy that slides into autocracy is bad for the economy and for businesses. We’ve seen this happen around the world. (Plus, you’d think business leaders would care about protecting fundamental rights, but nah).”
Journalist Thor Benson wrote: “The rich business executives are always perfectly fine with fascism if they think it will benefit them.”
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah summed it up: “Does everything make sense now? Is it clear yet?”
READ MORE: Trump Divides GOP Ahead of RNC Convention
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
