Hours after Netflix sent shock waves through the media and entertainment world by withdrawing its $83 million bid for most of Warner Bros. Discovery, Laura Loomer celebrated on X in all-caps: “VICTORY.” The far-right influencer, who has called herself President Donald Trump’s “loyalty enforcer,” had spent months denouncing Netflix over its ties to former president Barack Obama and urging Trump to “kill” the megamerger that would have given the streaming giant control over CNN, HBO and more. Netflix’s withdrawal Thursday evening cleared the way for David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance to instead take the reins of the cable network, whose coverage the president has labeled “fake news.”

Paramount’s triumph in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery is a game-changing business move — one that will add HBO, the DC Comics universe, the Harry Potter and Star Trek franchises, and a slew of other TV channels and movie studios to a vast father-and-son empire that already includes Oracle, Paramount Pictures, CBS News and a chunk of the new American TikTok. In an email sent to staff on Friday, and obtained by The Washington Post, Ellison said the “historic” merger would create “the next-generation global media and entertainment company.”

Among power players in politics and media, Paramount’s swoop is also widely viewed as a win for the right amid a broader push to rein in what many conservatives view as a liberal slant in the media and entertainment industries. And in Washington, questions have swirled as to what role was played by a president who famously relishes dealmaking.

As recently as Thursday morning, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos appeared at the White House amid reports that he would meet with Trump personally as he sought to save a deal the Silicon Valley streaming giant first struck with Warner Bros. in December. But things unraveled quickly from there. Ask The Post AIDive deeper

A senior White House official told The Post on Friday that Trump never met with Sarandos. Two other people familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said Sarandos was set to meet instead with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, but that fell through, too, though he did ultimately sit down with Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Soon after, Warner Bros. announced that it had deemed Paramount’s rival bid a “superior proposal.” By that evening, Netflix had withdrawn its bid, and on Friday, Paramount inked its deal to buy Warner Bros. for $110 billion.

The fallout could be far-reaching.

On Friday morning, staffers at CNN exchanged frantic messages in group chats as they confronted their future with Paramount, which some employees worried would align the iconic cable news brand with Trump. In an afternoon town hall, CNN CEO Mark Thompson sought to quell fears that Ellison and his tech mogul father, Trump ally Larry Ellison, would impose their politics on the network’s coverage, saying that a lot remained uncertain but that he held the outlet’s independence dear.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Post that Paramount’s win appeared to underscore an effort by the administration to “steer transactions to allies to ensure that news outlets that have historically been critical of the president or even have just been honest about his policies and his personal conduct will be more kind to him.”

Asked about suggestions that Trump told Netflix its merger would be looked upon unfavorably, White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “That is inaccurate.”

Netflix spokeswoman Emily Feingold also said on Friday that dropping its bid was pure business. “Our decision not to increase our offer reflects our disciplined financial approach and our clear assessment of value, and was not driven by regulatory considerations of any kind,” she said via email.

The acquisition swap would bring CNN under ownership cozier to the administration. Trump, an avid consumer of TV news and social media, has had a long relationship with Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle. The president previously praised both father and son as “friends” and “big supporters of mine” who he hoped would “do the right thing” with CBS.

Having backed Trump during his first administration, the elder Ellison has benefited from his loyalty in the second term. Oracle became a major investor in a TikTok deal blessed by the White House. Trump-appointed regulators approved the merger of his son’s company, Skydance, with Paramount. When Netflix announced its deal to buy most of the Warner Bros. Discovery portfolio last year, Trump said that he would be “involved” in determining whether the government would green-light the sale.

David Ellison and his father have been repeat visitors to the White House during Trump’s second term. Late last year, the former pledged to administration officials that he would make sweeping changes at CNN if he bought the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday night, the younger Ellison also attended Trump’s State of the Union as a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), a close ally of the president. The visit highlights how the younger Ellison, a former Biden donor, has made himself a regular fixture in Trump’s Washington as he and his father have amassed control of a growing empire of media and tech companies.

Netflix’s bid drew vocal opposition online from Loomer, a staunch Trump ally and former congressional candidate, who played up the company’s ties to former president Barack Obama. She noted that Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, struck a deal with Netflix in 2018. And Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser and U.N. ambassador, sits on the company’s board. Other prominent right-wing influencers, including far-right activist Jack Posobiec and conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, lobbed similar criticisms.

Last week, Loomer posted on X criticizing comments that Rice made on a recent podcast appearance. Rice warned that corporations and institutions that had decided to “take a knee to Trump” would face accountability under future Democratic leadership — a sentiment Loomer called “anti-American.”

“President Trump must kill the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger now,” Loomer posted on Feb. 21, tagging the president and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr.

Hours later, Trump shared Loomer’s post on his own social network, Truth Social, and added, “Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences.”

In a phone interview Friday, Loomer claimed credit for the deal falling through, saying she believed Trump had killed it after Netflix refused to fire Rice, though she declined to say whether she had spoken with Trump directly. She said Paramount’s acquisition is a win for conservatives everywhere.

“I don’t know the Ellisons personally, but I have never seen the Ellisons promoting ‘woke’ identity politics and communism,” she said.

A person familiar with Netflix’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said Trump never told the company directly that it had to dismiss Rice, nor did he signal that he planned to intervene to stop the deal. The person said Netflix’s meeting Thursday with Justice Department officials went well.

The night before Paramount launched its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. in December, David Ellison was spotted at Trump’s Kennedy Center Honors. The company also hired a slew of Trump-aligned lobbyists, including top antitrust officials from the Trump administration, Makan Delrahim and Rene Augustine.

In August, Skydance merged with CBS News parent company Paramount in an $8 billion deal that was heavily scrutinized by federal regulators. In October, Paramount then purchased opinion journalist Bari Weiss’s website, the Free Press, for $150 million and named her editor in chief of CBS News. Ask The Post AIDive deeper

Weiss’s nearly five-month tenure at CBS News has been polarizing — and has some CNN staffers concerned about what’s to come for their network, they told The Post. Under Weiss, employees have described a culture clash with their new boss, who has overseen layoffs and a wave of departures, including “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper and veteran producer Mary Walsh.

“We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that,” Walsh wrote Friday in a farewell email obtained by The Post. “CBS Evening News” executive producer Kim Harvey rejected Walsh’s allegation in a note to show staff.

In a Thursday email to CNN staff, Thompson encouraged staffers to focus on their work. “Despite all the speculation you’ve read during this process, I’d suggest that you don’t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more,” Thompson wrote in the email obtained by The Post. Beyond that note, a CNN spokesperson told The Post that the company is “not saying much publicly at this point.”

At a CNN town hall on Friday afternoon, Thompson took questions from staffers about CNN’s editorial independence.

“We should be making the case that our audiences’ expectations of CNN are absolutely rooted in that tradition of news which doesn’t come with some corporate spin to it,” Thompson said, according to partial transcripts shared with The Post.

Still, multiple CNN employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their employer did not authorize them to comment, described a climate of apprehension at the network.

In Washington, one staffer described scenes of newsroom leaders going in and out of one another’s offices for closed-door meetings on Friday. “For the first time I am seriously considering aggressively looking elsewhere,” the staffer wrote in a message to The Post.

“Group chats have definitely been blowing up,” another CNN reporter wrote in a message to The Post. “As is typical, dark humor abounds.”

A third CNN employee said they thought it was too soon to tell what the exact impact would be. “Is this a Viktor Orban-style takeover of a network, or is it not? We simply do not know yet.”